My town is nowhere you have been, but you know its ilk. A roundabout off a national road, an industrial estate, a five-screen Cineplex, a century of pubs packed inside the square mile of the town’s limits.
Colin Barrett
I cited it in My NarcissusYours Truly and the aesthetic of Barrett hasn't left me since. But last night an unshakeable thought crawled into my brain, and I woke up to its full consequences this morning.
I've been doing a lot of meta writing. Notebooking and writing thoughts I get from living it. But I haven't been doing any fiction writing -- maybe once a week? I think a lot of my fiction input -- note input not output -- has been entangled to GabrielGreco. When we're in heavy discourse I find it easy to get those dopamine hits from writing fictional snippets here and there, even if they don't amount to any singular project. But when we're not talking it's easy to forget about the allure.
Sometimes when there's enough radio silence I can feel like I'd be happy living a life writing no fiction at all. And writing exclusively journals, memoirs, and thoughts.
The reason why Barrett's line has been in my head all morning is because I know that although <40 words takes less than 30 seconds to type, those particular <40 words took a constant dedicated practice to even set the stage for such lines to be formed.
I thought about how I wasn't putting any effort into creating fictional stories. I thought of how I always feel like I'm thinking fiction and non fiction (notebooking in my case) is mutually exclusive. When in fact I know that notebooking is what drives the fiction. It's just that I took a few month pause from notebooking and now I'm paying the debt for it. By being unable to write fiction. For now at least. I'll start again today though. No better time.
I was just watching some House Hunters type of show with the wife and the couple visit an apartment where a large dresser seems to dominate a corner of the living room. "It looks like it's about to mug them" I said. Then I thought, ha, that's a pretty good observation about a piece of furniture, and I took out my phone and wrote an intro paragraph.
"In the corner of the bright living room, loomed a tall and wide wooden armoire, painted black and looking like it wanted to mug anyone passing by. They didn't say anything about it until leaving the place, and even then only in passing, "that dresser, huh?" They'd been almost intimidated, as if they'd offend it. But a week later, having paid the first and last month of rent, they moved into the old apartment by the river and made it their new home, shady armoire and all."
Could this be the beginning of a quasi horror short? A quaint travelogue? It doesn't matter, what's important is that these thoughts or memoir snippets can easily be molded to shape a story. Maybe you don't see it, but I'd say you're always writing fiction.
Ah how often do you write these snippets? I have not even been doing that. I need to gateway into 'writing fiction' by always snippeting. I actually really like the snippet you wrote above.
I believe maybe you and I have been good at such one-offs. Maybe people complimented us and we got enough dopamine that we never felt enough drive to go and write a big project. That's my story. Trying to write a new story though lol
Yours Truly
GabrielGreco
"In the corner of the bright living room, loomed a tall and wide wooden armoire, painted black and looking like it wanted to mug anyone passing by. They didn't say anything about it until leaving the place, and even then only in passing, "that dresser, huh?" They'd been almost intimidated, as if they'd offend it. But a week later, having paid the first and last month of rent, they moved into the old apartment by the river and made it their new home, shady armoire and all."
Could this be the beginning of a quasi horror short? A quaint travelogue? It doesn't matter, what's important is that these thoughts or memoir snippets can easily be molded to shape a story. Maybe you don't see it, but I'd say you're always writing fiction.
I believe maybe you and I have been good at such one-offs. Maybe people complimented us and we got enough dopamine that we never felt enough drive to go and write a big project. That's my story. Trying to write a new story though lol