1. 23 Aug


    When he sat down to write his great novel, he considered all the possibilities. He thought about his life, about the world the way he saw it. He always had heard from his English teachers to just write what you know. He would try to find inspiration in his life, but his mind would always wander back to Joyce and to Ulysses. He would think about how pointless and mundane his life was, about how little inspiration he could draw from his experiences. He thought about Hesse, he considered the metaphysical aspects of his life. He thought about adding an element of mysticism to his writing, he began to consider his own spirituality. But perhaps because there was nothing there to inspire, or perhaps because he was not yet ready to face the deep and heady discourse, he quickly abandoned the thought. The publishers had already sent him his advance, and he had already spent most of it on god-knows-what. He needed something, and he needed it last week. The air was dense with the smoke from his Parliaments, his eyelids heavy. He minimized Word and opened up Firefox, his home screen opening to his inbox full of unread messages from his publishers. He navigated to the New York Times bestsellers list and callously scrolled through the entries. He wasn’t clever enough to write a mystery thriller, or sentimental enough to write the weepy war drama. Then he saw it. The lowest common denominator. An instant paycheck. The words poured out of him, and collected onto the page as sentences and chapters. Without thinking, without worrying about themes, story arc, or character development he laughed his sardonic laugh and let his hands type faster than his mind could think, trying to not consider anything too carefully. He would laugh about it with his friends, he would say that he did it as a joke, to be ironic. He would order everyone in the bar a drink, then quietly excuse himself. He would need to get up early the next day to go to a book signing, the crowds of teenage girls and inappropriately aged men looking at him adoringly. He would write the sequels, he would cash the royalty checks from the film adaptations, he would grow rich and fat and old, and would do so without thinking, without contributing anything new or original to the world… He sat in front of his laptop in his haze of Parliament smoke and stared at his computer screen. He had typed the only literary quote he had ever liked enough to remember, from Steppenwolf: “Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.”

    When he sat down to write his great novel, he considered all the possibilities. He thought about his life, about the world the way he saw it. He always had heard from his English teachers to just write what you know. He would try to find inspiration in his life, but his mind would always wander back to Joyce and to Ulysses. He would think about how pointless and mundane his life was, about how little inspiration he could draw from his experiences.

    He thought about Hesse, he considered the metaphysical aspects of his life. He thought about adding an element of mysticism to his writing, he began to consider his own spirituality. But perhaps because there was nothing there to inspire, or perhaps because he was not yet ready to face the deep and heady discourse, he quickly abandoned the thought.

    The publishers had already sent him his advance, and he had already spent most of it on god-knows-what. He needed something, and he needed it last week. The air was dense with the smoke from his Parliaments, his eyelids heavy.

    He minimized Word and opened up Firefox, his home screen opening to his inbox full of unread messages from his publishers. He navigated to the New York Times bestsellers list and callously scrolled through the entries. He wasn’t clever enough to write a mystery thriller, or sentimental enough to write the weepy war drama. Then he saw it. The lowest common denominator. An instant paycheck.

    The words poured out of him, and collected onto the page as sentences and chapters. Without thinking, without worrying about themes, story arc, or character development he laughed his sardonic laugh and let his hands type faster than his mind could think, trying to not consider anything too carefully.

    He would laugh about it with his friends, he would say that he did it as a joke, to be ironic. He would order everyone in the bar a drink, then quietly excuse himself. He would need to get up early the next day to go to a book signing, the crowds of teenage girls and inappropriately aged men looking at him adoringly. He would write the sequels, he would cash the royalty checks from the film adaptations, he would grow rich and fat and old, and would do so without thinking, without contributing anything new or original to the world…

    He sat in front of his laptop in his haze of Parliament smoke and stared at his computer screen. He had typed the only literary quote he had ever liked enough to remember, from Steppenwolf:

    “Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.”