Hi there.
This is the first time I'm entering WWYP, and, well, it's also the first time in years that I've really written a story. It's also a very short story. Which is partially because I wrote it in a matter of two hours, but mostly because I just don't have the patience and experience to carry on a longer one.
Obviously, I have no way of winning the competition, that's okay.
However, I want to apply to a course at university for creative writing... And for that, I'll need 20 pages of portfolio to show that I have talent.
Constructive criticism and any other types of help, I would greatly appreciate.
Well, erm. Enjoy, I guess!
White.
In my culture, white is a color generally associated with good; purity, angels, shiny things. In Indian culture, it's the color of death.
I chew on my pencil.
The Indians have a point. White is the color of emptiness.
If this piece of paper wasn't so white, I'd have a lot fewer worries.
Half an hour, seven minutes and several seconds have passed if I'm to believe the ticking clock, and I have gloriously made the accomplishment of chewing the combined weight of about 20 gram in wood off my pencil.
Well, I suppose that technically white isn't a color at all.
Enough of that. This paper won't fill itself with a story by staring at it. I need to start somewhere.
They need to be entertained, right? All I need to do is be better than what's on TV. It can't be too hard. The TV is dumb. I'm smart. Can't be too hard.
I'll just have to start at the beginning.
That's it. I'm gonna write a parody of superhero stories in which the superhero has some sort of really weird superpower that makes no sense at all that will make people go “my, that superhero's power appears to make no sense at all,” and he'll be like, “maybe if I had a better writer this would make much more sense!” Hilarity ensues.
Hilarity indeed.
I need an aspirin. I think I got a headache from realizing that I actually thought that was a good idea. Or maybe it's the coffee.
Forty-three minutes.
TV sounds pretty good right about now.
I've got it. A crime-scene investigation team that actually does crime-scene investigation instead of detective work. Except after work, they turn into real superheroes and fight crime.
I suppose a curse word now graces the paper. That is better than nothing.
It is 8:41pm, the 10th of February, and I wrote a single four-letter word onto my notebook. Perhaps I should let another one join it. It might feel lonely.
Everyone loves postmodernism, right? It's the way things are moving these days. It's how artists separate themselves from pulp fiction authors. I realize that. Even Cartoon Network realized that. Maybe if I amalgamate a noir plot and something completely unrelated. Like medieval fantasy. The hunter has to investigate the case of the Red Riding Hood and her curiously nameless grandmother. The Big Bad Wolf is a prime suspect, but is made untouchable by hiding behind a political activist group against racism towards wolves. Covering two bases at once!
That's good. I can work with that.
10:21pm. I wrote a limerick consisting of guttural noises. It could probably pass as modern art. The single line I wrote for the fairy tale noir barely passes as a failed attempt at humor.
“Once upon a time...” Good luck starting with a beginning like that, Grimm. The Pulitzer Prize is as good as yours.
Why am I even trying to apply for this spot? The creativity I'm showing barely suffices to get me a job at McDonald's creating burgers. Or to make 3rd-graders laugh with gutteral noise limericks.
Why do I even want to be an author?
I pause.
My hand grasps the paper, squeezes, forms a ball, throws. The ball is cleanly devoured by the basket without a sound. My hand rests. The wood feels mildly hard. I get up, move my feet to the window, my hands turn to open it. I return to my seat.
To be an author.
I'll just have to start at the beginning.
The first time was in elementary school. “I'm gonna be an author.”
I also wanted to be an paleontologist, because I thought dinosaurs were cool.
Childish dreams, I suppose. The typical boy probably wanted to be an austronaut and eat cookie dough, ignorant of the dullness of space, the hard training needed to become an astronaut, and that his stomach would hurt from eating too much dough.
Granted, dinosaurs are pretty cool. But they are probably just a child's version of an older man's roleplaying game dragons. Fantastical creatures. Children are uneducated after all. They would probably want to befriend a dinosaur. Teach it to talk, maybe. Talking animals, like in the Saturday morning cartoons. Or in that book.
A book I read when I was young. Don't remember it well. About a young male cat. He was fascinated by what lies outside of the fence of their well-protected garden. In the end, he develops into a strong adult. And is rejected by his former family upon his return. It was... I believe it was sad.
Like that other book we had to read for school. About a boy who meets a girl, a fugitive from France during the Nazi era, the girl is mute. They begin to communicate using puppets. Slowly she starts to speak, they talk and begin to understand each other, but in the end, some other damn kid does something that makes her fall back into her trauma and she never comes back and that although the boy confesses his love to her in French. I was indignant.
I cried.
An author.
Another book I read was about a young girl.
That young girl had a special power. She could listen. She could listen so well that fighting couples could come to her and talk, and in the end, they would make up with each other. That's how well the girl could listen.
She could also tell stories.
She gathered children to play. They had nothing but the things that were lying around. And the things turned into a boat. The surroundings turned into a roaring ocean. The children lived the story. And the story lived in them.
A ball of paper is pushed down the table as a fresh breeze enters through the window.
The breeze turns into a powerful storm, the likes of which would have made Captain Blackbeard kneel and pray to God.
Waves pound against the walls of the house, knocking rudely to demand entrance. I tear open the window, and as if to spite fate itself, step onto the windowsill and yell to overpower even the devilish orchestra of this monstrous storm: “If it's a challenge you want, I shall be your opponent!”
With her brute unseen hands, the sky sweeps me off the solid ground, tossing me through space, over the hilltops and the highest roofs. It stares into my eye and asks with its voice of a thousand drum rolls, “Are you scared?”, and I stare right back, and I laugh.
Why do I want to be an author?
Because I want to tell a story.
Because the story wants to be told.
I pick up the pencil from the floor of my room.
And I write.
This is the first time I'm entering WWYP, and, well, it's also the first time in years that I've really written a story. It's also a very short story. Which is partially because I wrote it in a matter of two hours, but mostly because I just don't have the patience and experience to carry on a longer one.
Obviously, I have no way of winning the competition, that's okay.
However, I want to apply to a course at university for creative writing... And for that, I'll need 20 pages of portfolio to show that I have talent.
Constructive criticism and any other types of help, I would greatly appreciate.
Well, erm. Enjoy, I guess!
Fiction
White.
In my culture, white is a color generally associated with good; purity, angels, shiny things. In Indian culture, it's the color of death.
I chew on my pencil.
The Indians have a point. White is the color of emptiness.
If this piece of paper wasn't so white, I'd have a lot fewer worries.
Half an hour, seven minutes and several seconds have passed if I'm to believe the ticking clock, and I have gloriously made the accomplishment of chewing the combined weight of about 20 gram in wood off my pencil.
Well, I suppose that technically white isn't a color at all.
Enough of that. This paper won't fill itself with a story by staring at it. I need to start somewhere.
They need to be entertained, right? All I need to do is be better than what's on TV. It can't be too hard. The TV is dumb. I'm smart. Can't be too hard.
I'll just have to start at the beginning.
That's it. I'm gonna write a parody of superhero stories in which the superhero has some sort of really weird superpower that makes no sense at all that will make people go “my, that superhero's power appears to make no sense at all,” and he'll be like, “maybe if I had a better writer this would make much more sense!” Hilarity ensues.
Hilarity indeed.
I need an aspirin. I think I got a headache from realizing that I actually thought that was a good idea. Or maybe it's the coffee.
Forty-three minutes.
TV sounds pretty good right about now.
I've got it. A crime-scene investigation team that actually does crime-scene investigation instead of detective work. Except after work, they turn into real superheroes and fight crime.
I suppose a curse word now graces the paper. That is better than nothing.
It is 8:41pm, the 10th of February, and I wrote a single four-letter word onto my notebook. Perhaps I should let another one join it. It might feel lonely.
Everyone loves postmodernism, right? It's the way things are moving these days. It's how artists separate themselves from pulp fiction authors. I realize that. Even Cartoon Network realized that. Maybe if I amalgamate a noir plot and something completely unrelated. Like medieval fantasy. The hunter has to investigate the case of the Red Riding Hood and her curiously nameless grandmother. The Big Bad Wolf is a prime suspect, but is made untouchable by hiding behind a political activist group against racism towards wolves. Covering two bases at once!
That's good. I can work with that.
10:21pm. I wrote a limerick consisting of guttural noises. It could probably pass as modern art. The single line I wrote for the fairy tale noir barely passes as a failed attempt at humor.
“Once upon a time...” Good luck starting with a beginning like that, Grimm. The Pulitzer Prize is as good as yours.
Why am I even trying to apply for this spot? The creativity I'm showing barely suffices to get me a job at McDonald's creating burgers. Or to make 3rd-graders laugh with gutteral noise limericks.
Why do I even want to be an author?
I pause.
My hand grasps the paper, squeezes, forms a ball, throws. The ball is cleanly devoured by the basket without a sound. My hand rests. The wood feels mildly hard. I get up, move my feet to the window, my hands turn to open it. I return to my seat.
To be an author.
I'll just have to start at the beginning.
The first time was in elementary school. “I'm gonna be an author.”
I also wanted to be an paleontologist, because I thought dinosaurs were cool.
Childish dreams, I suppose. The typical boy probably wanted to be an austronaut and eat cookie dough, ignorant of the dullness of space, the hard training needed to become an astronaut, and that his stomach would hurt from eating too much dough.
Granted, dinosaurs are pretty cool. But they are probably just a child's version of an older man's roleplaying game dragons. Fantastical creatures. Children are uneducated after all. They would probably want to befriend a dinosaur. Teach it to talk, maybe. Talking animals, like in the Saturday morning cartoons. Or in that book.
A book I read when I was young. Don't remember it well. About a young male cat. He was fascinated by what lies outside of the fence of their well-protected garden. In the end, he develops into a strong adult. And is rejected by his former family upon his return. It was... I believe it was sad.
Like that other book we had to read for school. About a boy who meets a girl, a fugitive from France during the Nazi era, the girl is mute. They begin to communicate using puppets. Slowly she starts to speak, they talk and begin to understand each other, but in the end, some other damn kid does something that makes her fall back into her trauma and she never comes back and that although the boy confesses his love to her in French. I was indignant.
I cried.
An author.
Another book I read was about a young girl.
That young girl had a special power. She could listen. She could listen so well that fighting couples could come to her and talk, and in the end, they would make up with each other. That's how well the girl could listen.
She could also tell stories.
She gathered children to play. They had nothing but the things that were lying around. And the things turned into a boat. The surroundings turned into a roaring ocean. The children lived the story. And the story lived in them.
A ball of paper is pushed down the table as a fresh breeze enters through the window.
The breeze turns into a powerful storm, the likes of which would have made Captain Blackbeard kneel and pray to God.
Waves pound against the walls of the house, knocking rudely to demand entrance. I tear open the window, and as if to spite fate itself, step onto the windowsill and yell to overpower even the devilish orchestra of this monstrous storm: “If it's a challenge you want, I shall be your opponent!”
With her brute unseen hands, the sky sweeps me off the solid ground, tossing me through space, over the hilltops and the highest roofs. It stares into my eye and asks with its voice of a thousand drum rolls, “Are you scared?”, and I stare right back, and I laugh.
Why do I want to be an author?
Because I want to tell a story.
Because the story wants to be told.
I pick up the pencil from the floor of my room.
And I write.