For The Hell Of It - A short story about short story writing.
The provisional front cover I have designed.
Chapter 1
Marinade.
Just let them marinade. Let them marinade, and let yourself
marinade, thought Dail. Clearly The Bath was the best place for letting ideas
formulate in your head and stew in their own juices, slowly maturing like a
fine wine. Or cheese. But Dail wasn’t entirely fond of the idea of having
cheese or wine in his head. How would he explain it to the doctors?! Well he
liked having them in his head, but only his mouth. And even then, that was only
a sort of toll road on the way to his stomach…
“Snap out of it man!” he cried with
unorthodox theatricality, taking delight at the way his voice reverberated
around the tiled bathroom, then wondering why he’d said ‘Snap out of it man!’
aloud, considering there was no one else around, then realising this should not
have surprised him, given that he was in the bath and was not prone to taking
baths when other people were in the room, before ultimately returning to his
original idea of letting thoughts marinade. But this was only the thought of
letting them marinade, not actually having any sort of constructive ideas and
letting them slowly mature, like cheese or…
Get out of The Bath; it’s the only
way. The Bath is bad for ideas. It’s all the reverberation and water.
Much better. Clearly The Toilet was
vastly superior to The Bath for thought formulation, though so far the only
ideas that had snuck up on his brain were entirely related to why The Toilet was
better for thinking than The Bath, and even then these thought processes were
predominantly cyclical. ‘I should document these thoughts’, he thought, but
following that decisive plan of action his brain was emptier than The Bath he
had just drained because it wasn’t allowing his thoughts to blossom.
“Bugger.”
How hard could it be to write a
book?! Start with something simple. A name for a character. Kenneth? No, nobody
is called Kenneth anymore. Steve? Too obvious. Murray? Too minty. Chad? Way too
American. Barry? Too ‘unreliable builder’-ee. Ok. Get inventive. How about your
name backwards? Liad. What the hell, man?! That’s not even a real name! To hell
with this, character names are a minor detail and can always be put in later.
Why not just not have names at all? Person #1, Person #2 etc. That could work…
“Good morning!” chirped Person #1, a little too enthusiastically for
Person #2’s liking, considering it was a Monday morning and it had been foggy
for two weeks in a row.
“Morning”, mumbled back Person #2, all the while loathing Person #1 for
their morning-person-chippery-ness. What kind of stupid name was ‘Person #1’
anyway? A silly name. That’s what kind.
No. It’s not going to work. People
need, at the very least, names, concluded Dail. Hmm, this is a much more
cumbersome undertaking than originally anticipated. Is there even a point in writing a book? Of course there isn’t. Just like
there’s no point in trying to guess what state your bread is going to come out
of the toaster in. It depends entirely on the mood of the toaster. Will it be a
bastard and burn it? Probably, and you're usually in a rush when it does. Ah,
breakfast roulette, helping to stave off the insanity of mornings those few
precious moments longer…
Ok, how
about a face? Imagine a face. Vital features; eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hair,
philtrum… just need to decide on size and arrangement.
Ten
minutes later and Dail was making as little progress as a Thing that was
attempting something that it was grossly ill-equipped to attempt, yet still
approaching the task with a great deal of pluck and determination, despite
ultimately being doomed to an inevitable and wholly soul crushing failure.
Why can’t
I even decide on a face?! All that’s happening in my head is this confounded
humming to a non-specific tune! What if there were little people looking to buy
a brain and they were walking around checking the place out as if it were a
house? How would the estate agent get around that one?
“I say, Mr. Fancy-Estate-Agent-Man, what on
Earth is that semi-tuneful humming sound?”
“Oh don’t mind that, it’s just one of the
house noises. As this house was constructed using fairly un-traditional methods
and designs, it is prone to some odd squeaks, creaks and leaks. But don’t
worry, you’ll get used to them though and may even come to love them like a
member of the family. It all adds to the charm of the house. Now if you’d like
to follow me through to the master bedroom with en-suite tennis court…”
Great
googely-moogely, proclaimed Dail to no-one in particular within the confines of
his own head. My legs appear to have descended into a light slumber. How long have
I been on The Toilet for?! Ok, take it slowly, nothing fancy. Just try to stand
up…
It was
later argued that the only thing to fall with more drama and outrageousness
than Dail when he tried standing up was the British Empire.
“Bugger.”
