Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Advice for aspiring writers

One frequent piece of advice given to neophyte writers is "Keep a piece of paper and a pencil with you at all times - you never know when an idea will strike and believe me, you won't remember it, however much you think you will. Write it down immediately."

A few days ago I was in the car and had a brilliant idea for a funny pun - probably something like "Ha ha! Nerd's Best Soup!" or "Why don't I rewrite Mick Farren's 1975 classic novel The Texts of Festival as actual texts from an actual festival?" Anyway, I couldn't find a pencil and paper and STB rather pointedly (since he'd bought it for me) remarked, "Why do you need paper? You have a miniature supercomputer in your handbag!" And so I do, a Samsung Galaxy Note 3. But I have no idea how to take a note on it. I suppose I could Tweet the idea.

I do have pieces of paper and pencils in the bathroom and in my bedside drawer, though.  Every now and again some writing appears on the pad in the bedroom and the simplest explanation is that I have written it because I have had A Nidea during the night.  One appeared today and I have no memory whatsoever of writing it, and I don't know if it's from a dream or just a great idea I had while falling asleep that needed writing down so it would not be lost to the world.

It says:
"Jerry, I'm dying!"
"Dying? Good! You tried to consume the whole world and the best thing that could happen to you is die!"
Inhuman black beetle eyes made me wonder if a human could climb it.
Leaning out of the first floor window looking at the legs of the women below in their short shorts as they run for the bus ball.
I really don't have a clue what that means, or even whether it's one thought, or two, or three. How wonderful it has been preserved for posterity.

4 comments:

KaliDurga said...

This reminds me of a Seinfeld episode.

The new numeric-only captchas are so much easier to read.

Lyle Hopwood said...

Would it remind you of Seinfeld if it hadn't said, "Jerry"? Because the note actually had a flat underline, meaning "fill in the name here" and Jerry was the first name I thought of (i.e. the waking me thought of).

KaliDurga said...

Hmmmm... I don't know. Maybe that was the trigger. Funny how the brain works.

Have you figured out yet what a "bus ball" is?

Lyle Hopwood said...

I'd crossed out bus and put ball, but your guess is as good as mine. The scenario is very different if they're playing football than if they are running for a bus, so what was I thinking about that I could alter all of the mise en scene by changing the last word? And I don't spend any of my real life looking at women in short shorts, even if they are playing football.

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