Quibbling Scribbling

 It was one of those summer afternoons that seemed to go on forever.  The heat filled the small room and pushed us oozing into our seats. When I looked over, John was fiddling with his phone. "Anything good?" I drawled. He grunted. "Good to hear.  Keep me posted." I said. The heat and silence ballooned oppressively. I slumped further on the couch and stared hazily at the patterns in the cracks in the ceiling. "Can I get your opinion on something?" I finally asked. "Just until until Noah gets here, I know we've gotta go soon."   He flipped his phone down into his lap and looked at me.   "Bout what?"  "It's a story I've been thinking about. Haven't written it down yet. Too much effort." "That's a mood. Let's hear it." "Okay, cool, will you tell me if you agree afterward?  Maybe I'll write it down after all."  He didn't respond, but I was already deep in thought.  The scrap of a

I only write beginnings and I never finish my stories.  There's no reason for it, it just happens that way.  I'll think of a snappy, eye-catching start to my tale, something that really grabs your attention and makes you curious, but inevitably, I'll run out of steam before the end. (That, by the way, is a disclaimer.  This story is no exception.) If I had to put a number, I'd say that I make it past the halfway point about a third of the time.  Those odds aren't great, I'll admit.  It gets worse after that.  In the next quarter, I stop writing the rest of my stories. Here's a dialogue I designed for our mutual convenience to explain further. "What sorts of things do you like to write?" Johnathon, or maybe Alexandra asked.  We're either sitting in a trendy cafe, waiting for our coffee to cool, or in a loud retro diner, fiddling with the straws and napkins before our food arrives. "I only write the beginnings of stories," I replied. &q

     Though nowadays an ubiquitous comestible, by historical standards, bread is a modern invention.  First conceived by Adam Smith in his treatise The Theory of Moral Sentiments, bread was theorized by Smith to be an economical replacement for Caviar d'Aubergine which, since the early 1600s, had served as a staple for the American working class.  (Smith, with surprising prescience, also predicted the decline in popularity of two other common foods of the time: apple pie à la mode, which he correctly identified as too sloppy to eat on lunch break; and the durian, of which he perspicaciously observed enjoyment was merely a social pretense.) The work was considered quixotic in academic circles and received little attention at the time.   W. W. Wilson, typically one of Smith's staunchest defenders, wrote on the subject in the January 1760 issue of 'The Ipswich Journal',        "Bread? What's this about bread?"      Smith did not pursue this field of inquiry a

The gas station sat on the edge of town, and past the barred windows and brightly lit lot, the vast, black gulf of night stretched to the stars.  For most of the year, the light of the rushing cars extended the fringe of the world with a few meters of asphalt and stringy weeds; now, in the winter, their passing lent color to the snow. The woman swept through the automatic doors like the winter wind. She drifted down the isles, eyes fixed, her long white gown fluttering softly behind her. Strange folk came through in the early hours of the morning. Haunted faces, harried looks, and mumbled transactions filled my shifts. Each fleeing their own story. Each on their own way. Not my business. I had learned to nod and smile long ago. This lady was something else. Not necessarily trouble, just different. I watched the woman from behind the counter. It was impossible to ignore her. Her presence filled the small convenience store like a ton of snow: cold, white, and utterly silent. When she app

 Dedicating your life to art wasn't all it was cracked up to be. "Piss on it," I said to the computer screen, and then repeated myself, enunciating each word for emphasis. "Piss. On. it." Six-hundred words short and three AM.  Name a more iconic duo, am I right, boys? My wisecrack and rictus grin earned thunderous applause from my invisible audience.   In my defense, I was a third-rate, and I charged as such.  Surely my clients (such a lofty term for someone commissioning erotica!) understood that my prices were low because I was a shit writer.  No doubt they would be understanding when I explained to them that they were only short-changed due to my poor time-management skills.  I hooked my finger on rim of the laptop screen and prepared to abort.   Something stopped me.  I doubt it was any sense of professionalism, but you never knew -- like a persistent rash, that thing came back to niggle at the worst times.  Let's just call it "cold self interest&qu

 "I don't really have a style. I imitate whoever I'm reading at the time," I said, a little uncomfortably.  I didn't remember how we had gotten on to the subject of my writing, and I wanted to change topics as soon as politely possible. "Your style is imitation, then. Pastiche."  She said. I laughed. "Yeah, I guess.  That's a way of putting it."  I was going to change the subject then, ask her about her earrings or if she was watching any good TV shows, but she was staring at me so solemnly that I couldn't work up the nerve. After a brief silence, she said, "Really though, that's your style, isn't it?" "Yes," I said, "I suppose it is." "And your content?  Do you imitate their content, too?" That was a tricky question.  She was being persistent, so I gave a longer answer.  Maybe if I spoke for long enough, she would get bored and switch to a different topic for me. "That's tricky.