Writing Online
"Cast thy bread upon the waters,"
so, was this guy feeding ducks?
Waiting, waiting, always waiting.
Promises are hard to trust.
Better pelt out piles of pebbles -
bread'll never make it 'cross!
Or perhaps I'll heave these boulders,
And other assorted rocks.
Doesn't matter that they read it,
only possibility.
So long, jewels of my collection.
I hope you'll come back to me.
* * *
"Wow, that waxed a bit dramatic at the end there, don't you think?" The Researcher didn't have the patience for poetry writing. Poetry reading was fine, as long as there was some bigger purpose. "Like learning about the history of meter. That is actually quite an interesting - "
"Of course it's dramatic. It's poetry, you idiot."
The Tragic Romantic gave the Writer a high five, which made her have to put down the phone she was one-handedly swyping with. The Writer often enjoyed colluding with the Tragic Romantic, getting down the words in a somewhat steady stream. Sometimes the Researcher was goaded into helping, like whenever a thesaurus was needed, which was typically fairly often. Not with this one, though.
"Back to the boulder we are working on..."
"It's kinda... It's more of a pile of boulders."
"Is that a mountain?"
"What kind of moron builds a mountain in the ocean?" The Anxious One was sometimes also the voice of reason.
"Maybe the boulders float?" The Researcher was thinking about pumice. Or... Very small rocks. Very small boulders? Hmm. The answer to the Anxious One's question is apparently an oxymoron.
"I wonder if anybody is going to understand what we're doing here, writing a novel about writing a novel." The Writer stretched her fingers and yawned. "With any luck, the other novel will turn out pretty well on its own."
"I thought it was pretty great!" said the Tragic Romantic.
The Anxious One, who was not only sometimes the voice of reason but also could be quite the merciless editor, snorted, "Well that's predictable. It only had the dramatic parts."
"But writing the exciting action - plot plot plot - skipping the description, that's what we learned works!" Protested the Researcher.
"You skipped the ENTIRE WEDDING SCENE."
"I was really impatient to get to the part with the sex."
"Look, the main thing - the most important thing - the part that frankly, ruins it for me almost completely, is the typos!" The Anxious One checked the transcript of what she was saying. "Hey, you left out my swears."
The Writer said, "that's my prerogative. I pretty much leave out 99% of your swearing."
"What about your shpiel about keeping a perfectly faithful transcript?"
"They're distracting."
"And stupid-sounding," piped in the Researcher.
The Anxious One scowled. "okay, okay. But did anybody else catch the biggest typo of them all?! THE VILLAIN'S NAME?!"
All of them looked at each other. That was quite a disappointment.
The Anxious One put her fingers to her mouth and started to bite her nails. "We should just like, go back and edit it."
The Writer shook her head. "No, it stays. Remember our desktop mantra?"
Some weeks ago now upon the invitation of a man they highly esteemed and respected, they had participated in a ten day social media fast. It had taken about a month to discover some of the effects of this fast. Only recently had they discussed one of the most important lessons learned about where and how time was wasted on social media. The answer: rereading.
Write something. Reread it. Post it. Reread it. Notice that somebody else read it. Reread it trying to pretend you're them, thinking their thoughts, seeing it and judging it as they would. Consider the possibility of x reading it. Reread it. Fix typos along the way, of course, which is probably good - but the time! The wasted time!
They had been casting all kinds of various sizes of rocks/words across the "waters" for so long now, it was almost impossible to notice the bad habit of rereading. The Anxious One relished the additional opportunities to worry and always came up with the nastiest, most depressing ways in which others might interpret the writing. The worst part was that quite often, she was actually right. This made her comments impossible to ignore.
She was also the one who begged for the rereadings. She savored them, actually.
But the time! "No." The Writer was firm and final. "We are not going to waste our lives in that way. This is why I posted that desktop background image. It's a good mantra for us for now."
[This is the place where the image would be if we weren't too lazy to insert it. But it's pretty boring anyway: just a .png of the words:
Reread
Only
Once!
]
"I liked the alley of trees at Rožmitál better."
"We can - and who knows, maybe we will - go back and fix those problems with the novel later. For now it's only onward and forward."
When writing, there was not much possibility to be overwhelmed with other feelings.
"Hey, I recently wrote a poem about that! And your sister said it was really good! 'How to prevent myself from falling down a dark abyss...'"
"Why'd it have to be an abyss, anyway? Why not a pit or something else less..."
"Abysmal?"
Groan.
The Writer shushed the Tragic Romantic. "We will let those poems see the light of day eventually. But why not create a collection entitled 'Men Who Piss Me Off' -"
"'Or broke my heart'!"
"How about just: 'Kate's Wrath'?"
"Look, I think you think the solution to every problem is to write a book about it." The Researcher was holding a box labeled 'Postpartum Recovery.' Everybody else groaned. They knew from experience that she was going to start shoving all kinds of data about how to do this effectively. It wasn't that she was wrong - it's just that it was, unfortunately, not something one could think their way to accomplishing. Things that didn't take place in the internal world were so much more difficult to control and command. Like almost everything having to do with a physical body.
"Sleep research and postpartum hormones...Lemmee see... There's a folder here about that somewhere..."
"Okay, okay, we get it. Time to stop writing and go back to sleep. Maybe we'll dream about something fantastic." The Tragic Romantic was already on her way to doing just that from where she lay on her velvet chaise, from the look on her face, eyes closed, obviously lost in some engrossing vision.
Even if nobody else reads or gets the fantastic inside joke we are apparently intent on creating, I think it will be worthwhile. We always want feedback on our work, after all, and it's so difficult to wait for it.
And if you want something done right, you have to do it yourselves.
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