“The other day…”
I got that phrase written when the cat threw up a hairball and the toilet backed up.
Suddenly I was transported from the mediocre world of writing fiction to the even more mediocre world of everyday life.
By the time I got back to my writing, you guessed it, like losing the remote control; I had lost my train of thought.
“Will I ever remember precisely what I had in mind when I began to write that phrase? I thought ….
or will “The other day” be a phrase left hanging there, pregnant with possibilities left unfulfilled ?
These thoughts rang a clarion bell in the mind of one J. Winfred Skitter, a once renowned writer and critic who had fallen off the cliff of despair and ended up in the life of squalid shelters and dry overpasses that so many of our citizens of this once great city call “home”.
Drunk beyond drunk, J. Winifred Skitter sat alone in his cardboard shelter, an ancient Apple computer (a relic of better days) his only friend.
He had spent the last 32 hours of his once celebrated life collecting cans along the freeway, and now had $13.57 worth hidden in some bushes down by the traffic light.
Waiting for daylight to break so he could find his way to the recycling plant and then the local liquor store Bubba’s, J W, as friends knew him, had spent a sleepless night thinking about his mother.
“ Perhaps I can write my way out of this fix” he thought
“I’ve done it before….maybe there is still a ray of hope in my life…..”
“ This is the beginning of my new novel !” cried Mary Pat Lester. ”Its so different from all the other beginnings."
Mary Pat., a middle aged housewife in Edison New Jersey, with the steel will, determination, and persistent drive only a middle aged housewife in Edison, New Jersey could know,had become a celebrated writer of women’s mystery novels.
In fact her novel “Meeting Meranda” had been selected as the best women’s mystery novel of all time by Dang-it Press a small publisher in nearby Clinton. “I have to phone Nicky , my editor and tell her the good news.“ Mary Pat said out loud.
Mary Pat had endured 4 days of writer’s block and was anxious to let someone in her circle know about the half a page of fiction she had just completed.
Suddenly a shot rang out in the apartment next to hers.
Like a light bulb going on the idea began to jell.
“I bet I’m the first old dog that has ever written a story like this….maybe I CAN learn a new trick or two” Bongo said to himself as he looked over the first three paragraph of a new book he had pitched to his editor, "Old and New Tricks."
Bongo really was an old dog ….literally.
Bobby and his mother and father had picked out Bongo from the litter early on a bright sunny Tuesday morning 12 years before.
Bobby had stood there looking at the new puppy cradled in his arms. “He has two cute floppy black ears and a button nose,” Bobby said.
His mother and father smiled at him.
Little did they know that the cute puppy would someday be capable not only of bringing the newspaper to them every morning but of writing a weekly column about animals in it as well.
Bongo had even greater aspirations than that however; he wanted to be a real writer.
A cloud of marijuana smoke drifted overhead and the sound of an electric guitar could be heard in the distance. “I really had a bad trip Man… where did you get that acid?”
Scratching his scraggly beard, Beads took a hit off of the joint someone had passed to him.
“I was falling into a well man! …it was like a million feet deep !…..and the whole time there was a really weird looking chick telling me about this book she had written…it was like written by all these different people man!.... they were all in this weird chick's head and they kept telling me different parts of the book..... Yeah and it was like a secret code Man ….with like the meaning of the universe in it….!”
Beads laid back into the mud and looked up at the sky.
“Well I don’t know …maybe you could write children’s books.”
Looking up from the mess of words that had been laid before him, Spencer looked down his long thin nose at the pathetic, disheveled figure that stood in front of his desk.
He had just read the first page of Willy’s autobiography and he really could make no sense of it.
“Its really not for us ….whatever it is,” he said
Just then, Victoria, a beautiful woman with long curly blonde hair and the most smashing body in London. walked into the office…
To Be Continued