shudder
Okay, so this is a really rough draft. I think I'd rather nest the block quotes, format-wise, but as far as content goes... I think it's what I want it to be. Holy shit, it feels nice to actually write something again.
Once upon a time, he swore to himself to be a great writer, but words don't work anymore. They don't flow. They have dried and become brittle, like stale tobacco -- and like stale tobacco, he burns through the words, but there is nothing left to savor. His days of savoring are over.
He stopped writing and stared at the paper, pleased. He missed writing. Writing about writer's block was old the first time it was done, and by now it reeked of forced creativity, but creative death? This was something he could grasp, and besides, it was based on truth. He was dead, creatively. These were the first words he was happy with for a long time. He lifted the (also dying) cigarette from the top of his shiny Pepsi can, his makeshift ashtray, accidentally ashed on his desk. He pulled hard, trying to resuscitate, puffed it briefly like a cigar. Maybe he would like a cigar, he thought. He took a shallow draw, just into his mouth, and watched sedately as the smoke cut milky lines in the air. It relaxed him.
He smokes now. He promised he would never do such a thing, but he smokes sometimes. Like, maybe biweekly. Like, less than that. He smokes with his friends, who have almost all dropped out of college (except for one of them -- Mickey, who dropped out of high school). He isn't far behind them, but still puts on a brave front, attends class, and is modestly successful.
Sitting here now, alone and smoking, he remembers that he also promised not to drink. Alcohol, though, has become something of a relaxant. He uses it to get to sleep. This is not as bad as it sounds; he doesn't knock himself out with the stuff, just has a beer every night. He likes the way it makes him feel. It was like a heavy, molten metal, flowing into his too-light, too-quick limbs and settling them, tiring him.
He inexpertly held his cigarette in his lips as he wrote, but the smoke slid under his glasses and into his eyes, dried them out, made him wince. He swore quietly, because it was late, and rubbed his eyes.
He remembered an unopened soda on the desk. Silly. Condensation sat up on the surface in a broken ring. He considered it for just a moment and lifted his pen again.
Smoking now, he though about when his father passed away. Oh, how he had railed against the man while alive, but dead... it hit him hard. It knocked him back. Blackened his eye. Cracked three ribs. That had been the first time he smoked alone.
Now, his ashtray sitting upon the table next to the typewriter that he loves the sound of but has never used to great effect, he begins to type.
He missed writing. He used to write in huge waves, powerful and rolling forces of movement. They held massive ships and vibrated with whalesong, mourned the dead on funeral ships and beckoned newly-birthed predators. His words were once kinetic, energetic inherently. Now, they were flat, dry. This was a desert of powdery sand that destroyed machinery and broke down, crumbled and fell like old monuments.
He sipped a drink, wondering offhandedly about his position. Not his position in the universe, nothing so grand, but his position in himself. What was he now, compared to what he used to be? Was he still a good man? Was he ever?
Broken promises are like broken plates, he reminded himself, and lit a cigar. They're both useless, and they're both sharp. He puffed experimentally, and surrounded himself with aromatic but choking smoke.
The typing sound stops abruptly, because he has knocked the table and sloshed his glass of water. It was a violent movement, and quite a lot of water spills across the table in an intriguing pattern for only an instant before it runs together into a puddle. Now, it is just a boring mess. He sops it up with a draft of a different story, one that he has given up on. The paper absorbs almost nothing, and just sits wetly in the middle of the puddle. He shakes his head, feeling tears push up behind his eyes inexplicably. He wishes that he could remember why he was so sad, but dismisses it. There's probably no reason -- he probably just feels sad tonight. Swallowing, he presses on.
He had a pen in one hand, and a notebook open before him. A glass of whiskey, decent-quality stuff, sat to his right, untouched. Three cubes of ice idly floated, corners softening to the strange viscosity of the liquid surrounding them.
The writer felt like that sometimes. Like he was being broken down by what was around him. The world gave when he pushed. It wasn't firm, it wasn't really pushing back, but it was still slowly softening him. Dissolving him. He hadn't written anything of value for so long, he wasn't sure he could still pull it off. He puffed at his cigar curiously, trying to taste whatever it was that he was supposed to taste. He just liked the smoke, the dangerous part.
Stop distracting yourself, he thought. Sighing, he took a sip of the whiskey and tried not to wince when the alcohol seared his throat. He liked it, he really did, but he still screwed up his face for just a moment when the flavor was strongest, just as he swallowed.
The pen touching the paper scratched in way that he found sickening.
I haven't written anything that interested me or had meaning to me in a long time, and it's starting to dig out this huge hollow in my chest, in my stomach, and I feel blood and bile and bits of important organs sliding around this chasm in my gut, but it doesn't hurt. It makes me feel empty, though. I can feel that something is missing. I used to think that writing was putting things out of me, putting things out into the world, emptying my head. I used to think that it would make me feel less-full, like I was purging secrets, but now I can tell that it was filling me up. Now, it is like I've been shot through with something outdated and large-caliber. Pieces of me all on the ground, and only the biggest part was dragged back to the tent, and instead of replacing whatever I lost, the frightened doctors have just sewn me up with plastic supports to maintain the shape of me. Now, there are loose bits sliding around and sometimes falling with a sick plop into the mess in the pit of my stomach from way up in my throat, but it doesn't ever hurt. I miss when it used to hurt.
He sits back in his chair and lets the echoing clatter of the typewriter fade. From the room, it is swift, but the sound clutters his head for perhaps a full minute before he can gather himself enough to continue.
The pen lifted from the paper and he stared at the drying ink oddly, as if he couldn't remember where the markings came from. At first, his face showed effort and recognition, as if the marks were familiar, but he couldn't quite place their origin. Then, sudden panic: The pen was in his hand, after all, and if these words didn't come from him, where did they come from. Fearful, childish tears slicked his face without even a sob -- sudden fear allowed them to simply run down his face, like faucets had turned on. It looked like blood in movies, pouring from an unseen wound hidden just beneath an actor's hand. These tears didn't seem natural.
And then, when he remembered all at once like the impact on the ground when you fall from a tree that these words were his, he wept and sobbed, still afraid, now because they could be true, and if they were true, didn't that mean that he was dying? Didn't that mean that he was going to become hollower and more fragile?
He sat back in his chair and put down his pen and massaged his hand. When he reached for his cola, he thought for a moment that it should have been in a glass. Wasn't it in a glass? He shook his head. This was good progress. This was what he'd needed: Productivity. Floodgates had opened and things were pouring out of him, pouring out and into the world. He hunted for his cigarette and couldn't find it. Even the shiny Pepsi ashtray was not where he thought it was.
He shrugged and drank deeply. The soda, while still cool, was now warm enough to stick in his mouth, a bitter, intangible coat that he suspected would stifle him should he try to speak. His pen sat neatly on the paper, perfectly askew to the carefully measured lines. He picked it up.
He sat back in his chair, feeling now more in-control of himself. His cigar had gone out, he had put it down and not touched it for too long now, and so it had died. The ice was thin in his glass, the whiskey diluted enough that he could drink in greedy gulps. He drank deeply, not wincing even when he swallowed, and left his pen in the empty glass.
What was he doing? He can't remember what he was trying to get at anymore. The typewriter was so loud, it had drowned his words. He imagines something wet and warm seeping from his ears, blood or worse, but when he wipes at them, there is nothing there. There is never anything there! There is never anything seeping from his ears!
Blinking, he swallows this panic and blinks the tears that were rising from his eyes. No need to get worked up, he thinks. These things take time, and the idea will return. He stands and stretches his legs.
The room was filled with thick smoke, and he was crying. He felt drunk, a disorienting dizziness spun the room around him like the man at the county fair spins the prize wheel. It never lands on anything good, but sometimes he could remember seeing someone win a good prize.
He sniffed into his sleeve, leaving a trail of mucus that humiliated him. Although there was nobody to see him, he finds a napkin in his desk drawer to wipe the remainder into and tried to orient himself. He was sobbing violently, somehow, just a moment ago.
Exhaling loudly, he wished he could remember why he was so sad, but promptly dismissed it. There probably isn't a reason, he thought, I'm probably just sad tonight.
Inhaling now, he noticed suddenly how stifling the smoke was and wondered where it came from.
Okay, there. Now I absolutely have to get back to studying.
Once upon a time, he swore to himself to be a great writer, but words don't work anymore. They don't flow. They have dried and become brittle, like stale tobacco -- and like stale tobacco, he burns through the words, but there is nothing left to savor. His days of savoring are over.
He stopped writing and stared at the paper, pleased. He missed writing. Writing about writer's block was old the first time it was done, and by now it reeked of forced creativity, but creative death? This was something he could grasp, and besides, it was based on truth. He was dead, creatively. These were the first words he was happy with for a long time. He lifted the (also dying) cigarette from the top of his shiny Pepsi can, his makeshift ashtray, accidentally ashed on his desk. He pulled hard, trying to resuscitate, puffed it briefly like a cigar. Maybe he would like a cigar, he thought. He took a shallow draw, just into his mouth, and watched sedately as the smoke cut milky lines in the air. It relaxed him.
He smokes now. He promised he would never do such a thing, but he smokes sometimes. Like, maybe biweekly. Like, less than that. He smokes with his friends, who have almost all dropped out of college (except for one of them -- Mickey, who dropped out of high school). He isn't far behind them, but still puts on a brave front, attends class, and is modestly successful.
Sitting here now, alone and smoking, he remembers that he also promised not to drink. Alcohol, though, has become something of a relaxant. He uses it to get to sleep. This is not as bad as it sounds; he doesn't knock himself out with the stuff, just has a beer every night. He likes the way it makes him feel. It was like a heavy, molten metal, flowing into his too-light, too-quick limbs and settling them, tiring him.
He inexpertly held his cigarette in his lips as he wrote, but the smoke slid under his glasses and into his eyes, dried them out, made him wince. He swore quietly, because it was late, and rubbed his eyes.
He remembered an unopened soda on the desk. Silly. Condensation sat up on the surface in a broken ring. He considered it for just a moment and lifted his pen again.
Smoking now, he though about when his father passed away. Oh, how he had railed against the man while alive, but dead... it hit him hard. It knocked him back. Blackened his eye. Cracked three ribs. That had been the first time he smoked alone.
Now, his ashtray sitting upon the table next to the typewriter that he loves the sound of but has never used to great effect, he begins to type.
He missed writing. He used to write in huge waves, powerful and rolling forces of movement. They held massive ships and vibrated with whalesong, mourned the dead on funeral ships and beckoned newly-birthed predators. His words were once kinetic, energetic inherently. Now, they were flat, dry. This was a desert of powdery sand that destroyed machinery and broke down, crumbled and fell like old monuments.
He sipped a drink, wondering offhandedly about his position. Not his position in the universe, nothing so grand, but his position in himself. What was he now, compared to what he used to be? Was he still a good man? Was he ever?
Broken promises are like broken plates, he reminded himself, and lit a cigar. They're both useless, and they're both sharp. He puffed experimentally, and surrounded himself with aromatic but choking smoke.
The typing sound stops abruptly, because he has knocked the table and sloshed his glass of water. It was a violent movement, and quite a lot of water spills across the table in an intriguing pattern for only an instant before it runs together into a puddle. Now, it is just a boring mess. He sops it up with a draft of a different story, one that he has given up on. The paper absorbs almost nothing, and just sits wetly in the middle of the puddle. He shakes his head, feeling tears push up behind his eyes inexplicably. He wishes that he could remember why he was so sad, but dismisses it. There's probably no reason -- he probably just feels sad tonight. Swallowing, he presses on.
He had a pen in one hand, and a notebook open before him. A glass of whiskey, decent-quality stuff, sat to his right, untouched. Three cubes of ice idly floated, corners softening to the strange viscosity of the liquid surrounding them.
The writer felt like that sometimes. Like he was being broken down by what was around him. The world gave when he pushed. It wasn't firm, it wasn't really pushing back, but it was still slowly softening him. Dissolving him. He hadn't written anything of value for so long, he wasn't sure he could still pull it off. He puffed at his cigar curiously, trying to taste whatever it was that he was supposed to taste. He just liked the smoke, the dangerous part.
Stop distracting yourself, he thought. Sighing, he took a sip of the whiskey and tried not to wince when the alcohol seared his throat. He liked it, he really did, but he still screwed up his face for just a moment when the flavor was strongest, just as he swallowed.
The pen touching the paper scratched in way that he found sickening.
I haven't written anything that interested me or had meaning to me in a long time, and it's starting to dig out this huge hollow in my chest, in my stomach, and I feel blood and bile and bits of important organs sliding around this chasm in my gut, but it doesn't hurt. It makes me feel empty, though. I can feel that something is missing. I used to think that writing was putting things out of me, putting things out into the world, emptying my head. I used to think that it would make me feel less-full, like I was purging secrets, but now I can tell that it was filling me up. Now, it is like I've been shot through with something outdated and large-caliber. Pieces of me all on the ground, and only the biggest part was dragged back to the tent, and instead of replacing whatever I lost, the frightened doctors have just sewn me up with plastic supports to maintain the shape of me. Now, there are loose bits sliding around and sometimes falling with a sick plop into the mess in the pit of my stomach from way up in my throat, but it doesn't ever hurt. I miss when it used to hurt.
He sits back in his chair and lets the echoing clatter of the typewriter fade. From the room, it is swift, but the sound clutters his head for perhaps a full minute before he can gather himself enough to continue.
The pen lifted from the paper and he stared at the drying ink oddly, as if he couldn't remember where the markings came from. At first, his face showed effort and recognition, as if the marks were familiar, but he couldn't quite place their origin. Then, sudden panic: The pen was in his hand, after all, and if these words didn't come from him, where did they come from. Fearful, childish tears slicked his face without even a sob -- sudden fear allowed them to simply run down his face, like faucets had turned on. It looked like blood in movies, pouring from an unseen wound hidden just beneath an actor's hand. These tears didn't seem natural.
And then, when he remembered all at once like the impact on the ground when you fall from a tree that these words were his, he wept and sobbed, still afraid, now because they could be true, and if they were true, didn't that mean that he was dying? Didn't that mean that he was going to become hollower and more fragile?
He sat back in his chair and put down his pen and massaged his hand. When he reached for his cola, he thought for a moment that it should have been in a glass. Wasn't it in a glass? He shook his head. This was good progress. This was what he'd needed: Productivity. Floodgates had opened and things were pouring out of him, pouring out and into the world. He hunted for his cigarette and couldn't find it. Even the shiny Pepsi ashtray was not where he thought it was.
He shrugged and drank deeply. The soda, while still cool, was now warm enough to stick in his mouth, a bitter, intangible coat that he suspected would stifle him should he try to speak. His pen sat neatly on the paper, perfectly askew to the carefully measured lines. He picked it up.
He sat back in his chair, feeling now more in-control of himself. His cigar had gone out, he had put it down and not touched it for too long now, and so it had died. The ice was thin in his glass, the whiskey diluted enough that he could drink in greedy gulps. He drank deeply, not wincing even when he swallowed, and left his pen in the empty glass.
What was he doing? He can't remember what he was trying to get at anymore. The typewriter was so loud, it had drowned his words. He imagines something wet and warm seeping from his ears, blood or worse, but when he wipes at them, there is nothing there. There is never anything there! There is never anything seeping from his ears!
Blinking, he swallows this panic and blinks the tears that were rising from his eyes. No need to get worked up, he thinks. These things take time, and the idea will return. He stands and stretches his legs.
The room was filled with thick smoke, and he was crying. He felt drunk, a disorienting dizziness spun the room around him like the man at the county fair spins the prize wheel. It never lands on anything good, but sometimes he could remember seeing someone win a good prize.
He sniffed into his sleeve, leaving a trail of mucus that humiliated him. Although there was nobody to see him, he finds a napkin in his desk drawer to wipe the remainder into and tried to orient himself. He was sobbing violently, somehow, just a moment ago.
Exhaling loudly, he wished he could remember why he was so sad, but promptly dismissed it. There probably isn't a reason, he thought, I'm probably just sad tonight.
Inhaling now, he noticed suddenly how stifling the smoke was and wondered where it came from.
Okay, there. Now I absolutely have to get back to studying.