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stories are the bones of everything

Pen

Whispers

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Born near the sea on a black stormy night during the winter, Abaddon’s emergence into the world was accompanied by a loud thunderclap. The walls of the mud hut where his father, Argos, a fisherman, watched anxiously as the midwife pulled Abaddon into the world, were shaking from the force of the winds. Icy missiles struck the roof as the blue-eyed, fair-haired boy emerged from his mother’s womb.

Rachel spoke when the midwife lifted and slapped the boy into crying life.

“May the same storms that accompanied him into the world guide and carry him always.”

The midwife shook her head, and spat. But that did not matter. It came to pass that Rachel’s words were prophetic.

Rachel doted on the boy. The boy doted on life, and the wonder of being alive. He learned to walk, then speak, then fish, and then read. The fisherman and his wife owned only one book. It was a treatise of the Milesian school of thought concerning the rise of all life from water. Abaddon read it hundreds of times. He learned all the names of the creatures in the sea. He learned how to tell what mood the sea was in by the color of the water, and by the motion of the waves.  From the book, Abaddon learned the knowledge of how to dive, and make himself heavy and light in the water. He began to swim for hours, then days. He would go out beyond the reefs and dive deep. By his tenth year, he was swimming out to his father’s fishing boat, catching up to it after it had been gone for two or three days. He would bring the book in a waterproof satchel, and read to Argos and the silent partner, Orto, who could not read.

Orto would stop working and listen. His craggy face would grow intent, and he would suck on his pipe. Unconsciously. He would almost go limp, entranced, his head wreathed in a cloud of smoke. The stories from the book made Orto’s eyes dance while the rest of his body almost forgot it was alive. Argos loved that power in his son’s voice, so he tolerated Orto’s lack of attention to the nets, and did his partner’s work in addition to his own while the boy read.

After reading the stories of how all life comes from the sea, Abaddon would share a meal of bread and fish with his father and the older fisherman. While Orto told him what a good and special boy he was, he would listen from his father’s lap. The old man’s gnarled hands would come together respectfully after his lips ceased praising the boy. Then, Abaddon would carefully pack up the precious book in his satchel, gravely shake each man’s hand, and dive into the sea. Just before he leapt from the small boat, the boy would salute and say, “I return to my mother.” And then he would swim with the dolphins, or dive to deep places no one else could go. Sometimes, when he arrived back on the shore, he would be carrying strange pearls, or other small treasures he had taken from the sea. Rachel’s smile would light up her face when this happened. Abaddon’s mother was much too beautiful to be a fisherman’s wife. Her red hair and fair complexion were the envy of the fishing village’s women. Rachel’s beauty was the undoing of everything.

One day, when Abaddon was 11, and had become renowned  along the entire coast for his swimming and diving exploits, a ship appeared on the horizon. It was a strange affair. Bigger than any local ship, and crewed by men rowing oars.  The sails were black and white. All the local ships used red sails. Some villagers sounded an alarm, but it was too late. The ship dislodged a landing party, and the landing party quickly took what it wanted from the town. When Argos the fisherman protested that his wife was not available as loot, he received a sword in his gut for the trouble. It took him hours to die, gasping and groaning in the sand outside his hut.

Rachel became the captain’s new toy, and Abaddon was beaten senseless after a fruitless struggle. When he woke, and protested, he was beaten again. The third time this happened, he saw his mother shaking her head. He stopped resisting, and was put to work as a ship’s boy. In time the ship was done plundering the coastal fishing villages. It began the journey back to wherever it had come from. One night, while Abaddon was cleaning the decks, his long hair falling over his face across his eyes, he noticed someone standing above him. Rachel bent and whispered in his ear. He nodded. She stood and left silently. Abaddon went back to scrubbing, his hands raw from the constant immersion in vinegar and the wood splinters that always jabbed him, no matter how hard he tried to avoid them.

The ship arrived in Silcyas, the greatest city of the three seas, and was heralded. Prisoners were unloaded, and some were sent to the auction blocks. Gregos, the captain, made the decision to keep his new ship’s boy and his concubine. He also kept three of the women from Abaddon’s village as whores for the crew. The rest of the villagers disappeared, never to be seen again. The captain, whose beard was almost always full of bits of food which he would sometimes pick out and then eat, was contemplative.

“Boy,” he shouted. “Come here.”

He glanced at the giant black who served as the ship’s warmaster and first mate.

“Teach the boy the sword, Davos. Every man on Styros fights when we need it.”

And so Abaddon was taught to fight. He learned the warrior’s trade from the very man who had stabbed his father in the stomach with a sword. Abaddon applied himself. He listened intently and only spoke when asked a question, never volunteering any more information than was necessary.

Abaddon read his book, which he had kept. He listened to the whispers his mother brought him from time to time. The two of them never spoke, except for the whispers which she breathed into his ear on dark nights.

The ship stayed in port no more than a few days. It resupplied, refitted as needed, and returned to the water, intent on plundering the shores of the three seas. Gregos, cunning and cold, guided the ship to the places least defended. He knew when and where the ripest fruits were. He plucked the excess food from his beard with his rough fingers and chewed it thoughtfully while instructing Davos on how to split the loot.

“Lash that man, Davos,” Gregos would say, and the man in question would be lashed. Like Abaddon, Davos rarely spoke. He merely nodded and grunted from time to time. His huge rippling shoulders in motion were enough to strike fear into the crew. The sunlight gleaming off of his oiled body sometimes blinded enemies in the heat of battle.

In teaching Abaddon, Davos grew to trust the ship’s boy. In time, he was promoted to the ship’s war crew. More time passed, and Abaddon grew tall and strong. He earned Gregos trust. And Gregos, who had a wife and family back in Silcyas, the greatest city on the three seas, began to think of Abaddon like a son. He allowed his concubine to visit her son, and she whispered to him. Sometimes, when she was done, he read to her from his book of the sea.

Abaddon became so trusted that he was allowed to swim next to the ship, and to disappear when he wished to explore the secrets of the sea. He always came back before he was needed. The crew became used to seeing Abaddon strip off his shirt and dive into the sea. A rope ladder was installed on the side of Styros to facilitate his returns.

One bright day, when the sun was at its hottest, Gregos called his ten best men to come up into the city and eat with him. Davos and Abaddon walked in the lead, side by side, silently. Everyone parted without a thought for the grim pair and their retinue. The ten men arrived, and were greeted by Gregos, his wife, and Gregos’  daughter Apollonia, a beautiful maiden of 15.

Ushered in gracefully, the crew were entertained by household slaves. A long retinue consisting of carnal acts interspersed with displays of skill and culminating in a gladiatorial match ended with a formal meal. Gregos stood, signaling silence.

“Shipmates. I am growing old. I have no son. It is my intention that one of you take my daughter and wed her. In this way, my legacy will live through one of you, my trusted men.”

Coughing, Gregos sat.

“Who volunteers to wed my daughter?”

All ten men stood silenty.

“Who is willing to die to have her?”

Six men sat.

Davos, Abaddon, and two others remained.

“Fight to see who will wed Appallonia.”

Davos struck down the fighter called Appos in a single mighty blow. Rykos fought longer, but as ineffectively against Abaddon, who was now 18, and as feared a swordsman as Davos. Abaddon never gave any indicators of what might happen next. He simply and silently parried every blow Rykos rendered. When that man grew tired, Abaddon struck his head off with a single, sure blow.

Davos and Abaddon rested for a time, and were offered wine. Abaddon shook his head. Davos drank his fill. Then they were joined. Just before their blades touched, Davos said, “The gods are with me Abaddon.”

Abaddon fought with his usual lack of flourish. Every move cold. Every stroke intentional. Davos, his teacher, fought with the wine fire in his belly, and the confidence of a teacher who knows his pupil is not yet ready. And Davos died with a look of surprise on his face when Abaddon blocked his sword blow easily and shoved a small dagger up through his chin and into Davos’ brain. The most feared warrior on the three seas crumpled to his knees and then rolled gently to his left side where he went to the waiting gods.

Quietly, and without emotion, Abaddon whispered, “Return to the mother Davos.” And that is where the three crewmen were buried by their shipmates the next day. Davos, Rykos and Appos returned to the mother, shrouded in cloth and rope. They fed the sea for its service to them. Gregos and the crew watched silently while Abaddon oversaw the burial.

After, Rachel appeared and whispered in her son’s ear.

The marriage was scheduled for the next week, to be held at sea. A good omen to overshadow the passing of three crewmen. At the feast, the entire crew became ill and died violently, racked by heaving and uncontrollable spasms. Only Gregos, his wife and Appalonia were spared the violent end. Shocked and confused, they rushed from one dying man to another, pleading and begging with them not to go to the gods. But go they all did, within minutes of one another. On a deck awash with bile, the sure footed Abaddon approached Gregos.

“You owes lives to the sea, my dear captain. I am collecting the debt now.”

Rachel watched as the old man fought desperately. When her son finished breaking both of the captain’s arms with sharp blows from the flat of his blade, the captain knelt. His useless arms dangling, and his face contorted in pain, he pleaded for mercy.

“The sea shows no mercy. My mother has none either.”

With those words, Abaddon cut open the stomach of Gregos wife and threw her overboard.

“My lovely bride,” he said, turning to a horrified Appallonia. “I fear I will never know your pleasures. Go to my mother, and please her instead of me.”

And the Abaddon cut off Appallonia’s hands and threw her into the water. Rachel whispered something in his ear, and he nodded.

Abaddon sailed Styros back to the village where his father had once tried to defend his mother, and burned the ship in the harbor. He returned to his shack, and lived there with his mother.

Years passed. Every day, Rachel whispered to Abaddon. Every day, he swam out into the water, looking for his father’s boat, diving and gathering necessities from the sea. In the evenings, son and mother would share the fire and fresh caught fish silently, mourning their loss together.  Abaddon read from the book the explained how we all come from the sea, and sometimes, just before they slept, Rachel would whisper something into his ear again.

One night the sea leapt up and swept both of them into her arms, taking them home, down into the places where Abaddon had dived as a child. Down to where no storms ever reached. To where Argos waited in the embrace of the mother of us all. To where Abaddon and Rachel wanted most to be. In the arms of eternity with the fisherman.

The Hill

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This hill, in this city, always bustled. It bustled most in the mornings, slowed down a bit just before lunch, and then picked back up for the lunch hour. After that it stayed relatively busy until after the bars closed. Once that happened, the hill and its rows of mission houses, standing silently, with glass eyes staring into the night, the brightly painted colors muted in the semi-darkness of the street lamps, almost slept for a little while. In its neurotic existence though, the hill never quite managed complete rest. It drowsed, but never slumbered.

On this day, on the hill, it is mid-morning and overcast. There is a bit of wet in the air, and it settles on the skin of the residents who venture out. At the bottom of the hill, a stooped old man with a cane considers his journey. He is looking up towards the top of the hill. His white beard flutters slightly in the wet wind. He sighs, and begins the ascent. Slowly. Carefully. With small, halting, tentative steps. His suit, carefully pressed, withstands the advances of the air’s moist embrace. The fabric makes a scrish scrish sound with each step. The old man’s cane compliments the music of his suit with a small, slow drum beat against the uncaring concrete sidewalk. Scrish, tap, schrish, tap goes the old man’s walking song.

A car is waiting at the light just below the hill’s birthplace. The light changes, and the car jerks forward with a start, belching a cloud of white smoke onto the sidewalk holding up the cane that holds up the old man. He is enveloped for a moment, then emerges with as much dignity as he can muster, a white handkerchief done in black stripes pressed across his nose and mouth.

At the top of the hill, a young man saunters confidently, headed down. He is full of himself in his brown leather jacket. It is this year’s style and the young man has paid twice what he should have, which inflates his own self worth. His shoes are scuffed, and he is unaware that women notice details such as this. It confuses him when they turn him down for the casual sex he often offers them, using the shoes   as a compass.

Under the young man’s jacket, his dirty black t-shirt says “Relax. I’m hilarious.” His jeans are wrinkled, and he has a three day growth of stubble. A cigarette dangles carelessly from his lips, which are humming a wordless tune that is neither cheerful or compelling. It merely passes for music, in an uninspired way.

His shoes drag with each step. Sometimes he idly kicks a pebble or some other detritus down the sidewalk. The young man’s eyes narrow when he does this. As if he has some personal hatred for everything that is not the sidewalk, that is not specifically designed to facilitate his shuffling gait. One of his shoelaces drags on the ground.

A door opens halfway up the hill. The door is painted a deep red, but passersby would probably describe it as maroon, depending on the light. From the door emerges a sharply dressed woman in her mid-20s, of middling height and clad in an arranged pile of coiffed, lustrous black hair. The woman is pushing a blue baby carriage with silent polycarbonate plastic wheels. They are the kind that will not wear out for ten of thousands of years after human society has collapsed. The wheels are more durable than almost any other object on this street, which is in between being bustling at this moment.

Also present is a girl of eight or nine years, who is wearing a red dress that is not of the same red as the door from whence she just emerged, stares solemnly at the street. She is not speaking to the woman. She is not looking at the baby in the carriage. She is observing her surroundings. Scanning.

The old man shuffles up. The young man shuffles down. The trio who have just been born into the world from the other side of a red or maroon door, depending who you ask, are moving onto the sidewalk that runs up the hill in stark contrast to its wider, rougher companion, the street.

A taxi is coming over the crest of the hill that never quite sleeps. A small crowd of Polish tourists is taking pictures of the famous old burger joint at the bottom of the hill, excited by the thought of delicious dead cow parts ground up just for them and covered with sizzling sauces and a cornucopia of garnishes. The Polish people love eating ground up animal flesh that will clog their arteries with fatty deposits. They are conditioned, and never think about the animal that gave up its life. The taxi driver too is a fan of sizzled flesh patties, and plans to take his lunch at the bottom of the hill. His cab sign reads OFF DUTY.

There are a few other travelers on the street. An old Asian man is coming down the hill on the sidewalk opposite the hilarious young man who isn’t funny. He drags his gnarled, wrinkled hand along every fence separating mission houses from sidewalks and street. He appears to be counting bars fastidiously, and his lips move in a muttering prayer to the gods of the ascending count. He looks panicked in the gaps between fences. An equally old white woman follows cautiously behind the muttering old apostle of numbers and fence bars. She wants nothing to do with him, and is protectively clinging to a brown paper bag that could be filled with groceries or cocaine. This city produces dozens of old ladies whose morality may not meet Midwestern community values, so one can never be sure what old ladies are carrying around. The bag clutching woman has a piece of white toilet paper fluttering from the back of her otherwise nondescript gray pants, which hold themselves conveniently above her hips through the miracle of elastic sewn into the waistband. The elastic will not last as long as the wheels on the stroller, which is now in the middle of the opposing sidewalk, guided carefully by the middle of the street woman whose deep black hair must have some magic that keeps it from going limp. The old yellow man and the old pale woman limp their way down the hill, separate, but equally aided by gravity.

In the moist, clingy air of the steep street, in the middle of a busy district in an even busier metropolis, someone is about to die. Planning leads to congruency trumps randomness. In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

The young man bends to tie his shoelace, which has come completely unraveled and is tripping him up. The old man steps in front of the taxi coming down the hill and holds up a single hand. His gravitas, in a single moment, goes from absent to presidential. The taxi driver stops thinking about seared flesh on assembled grain paste slices. The old man’s hand sends a message to the taxi driver’s brain which connects to his foot. The cab screeches to a halt.

The little girl makes brief eye contact with her black-haired caretaker, who could be her mother, but who is not. They both look into the stroller. The girl reaches in and pulls out a devastatingly dangerous looking gun. It is a semi-automatic .45 caliber instrument of lethality. It is made of black polymer, uses a Law Enforcement Modification trigger, and holds 12 rounds. The little girl only needs one of these, but she uses three. She has been trained.

In a practiced motion, she raises the weapon with her right hand and brings the left palm up to bear under the magazine. Her hands form a tight grip around the back of the pistol. She pulls the trigger three times, and three red holes blossom in the top of the young man’s skull. He never finishes tying his shoelace. The Polish tourists run screaming. The old man and the taxi driver exchange glances and positions. The gun in the old man’s hand does all the negotiating that is needed. The little girl reaches into the stroller again, and pulls out a white card. She tucks it into the back of the dead young man’s sport coat at the neckline. The note says, “For My Father” in neat black Times New Roman font. Probably 14 point.

The woman and the girl enter the back of the taxi while the lady with toilet paper pants and the Asian who counts fence posts gaze with astonished open mouths at the events. The taxi, now driven by the old man climbing up the hill, disappears into anonymity.

The city continues its business. Soon, it will deliver its servants to this hill. They will catalog, document, record and analyze. Then they will clean up the mess, and wash away the memory of the hilarious young man who, it may be speculated, failed to live up to the moniker on his t-shirt before meeting a bad end halfway down a hill on an otherwise nondescript day. For the young man does not look hilarious in death. Nor does the city that will be his grave seem relaxed. It is about to bustle again, and when it does, the young man’s trail will be erased.

Undertow

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I remember everything about that day. The brisk wind off the ocean, the scudding clouds and that pinkish sky. Little pebbles in my shoes. They distracted me. While I have made many mistakes in my life, that day represents the worst of them. I made the easy choice, and it was the wrong one. Maybe if I’d done it different, I wouldn’t be sitting in this room again.

Susan was still asleep when I woke up. She always slept late after our nights together. I guess she felt no guilt back then. I never saw an ounce of it in her green eyes. They were shut tightly when I left around sunrise to get coffee. She was snoring softly. I didn’t want to wake her. I looked at her body. So ripe. The black lingerie she wore for me, those little bits with the see through top and bottom. I loved that set on her, so I stared at it awhile. Watched her breathe. Watched her eyes moving underneath the lids. Smelled her cigarette smoke, clinging to everything in the room.

Then I went to the lobby, and I walked downward, following the path along the cliffs that hold the ocean back. When I looked back at the hotel, with its plethora of glass eyes, I wondered which of them might be awake. Watching me. Probably very few. Like Susan, the hotel slumbered.

The weather was strange that morning. It felt like it might storm or it might turn hot. I couldn’t tell at the time. The air smelled of salt, but there was something else. A stillness in the air. It felt like solitude. The only thing moving, other than me, was the ocean. I didn’t see any other people, and I didn’t see any birds. It was strange. There were usually birds.

I kicked pebbles. Stared in amazement at the tenacious shrubs that clung to the cliff’s edges. Life has a way, at least for a while. Then it must give up its turn. The green of the shrubs contrasted nicely with the grey of the soft rock from which they grew.

We were both unhappy. Susan and I. Both in marriages that made us feel unappreciated. Somehow we found each other. It had been going on for a few months, and we were still in that fantasy where somehow we were going to love each other forever, perfectly. Human hope. It’s amazing.

She had kids, and both of us had a lot of miles on our marriages. Finding happiness isn’t easy in this psychotic world. Safety is an illusion, you can see that from watching the news. Security? Ha! Ask anyone who has been downsized what you get for your blood, sweat and tears. Try to get a politician to explain how all the money is being used. Good luck with that.

We try for it all the same. And they steal from us, those rich, conniving, soulless bastards and whores. Paying us for fealty with our own money. Training us to vote for their false security and their wars. Lining their pockets with the extract of blood and tears and ruined lives. Those fucks.

How can you stay with someone who doesn’t pay attention to your dreams? Susan and I listened to each other in that regard, while we fucked and held each other and drifted off to sleep together. I loved her big green eyes. I loved her heaving breasts and nipples that turned from pink to red when I was inside her. I loved her smell, and the taste of cigarettes in her mouth when I kissed her. I love her compliance to every demand I made in the bedroom. She was good for me, for a time.

I was thinking about Susan and sipping my coffee when I noticed the girl, down at the bottom, right up near where those waves turn big and break against the rocks. The wind tugged on me just then, and teased me with its gusting. Playing, like a true master does when he knows he can have you at anytime. I knew the wind could force me into the water if it wanted that. I looked down, in the direction of that unfulfilled promise of escape. That’s when I noticed her.  She was almost directly below me. She saw me too. I don’t know how she could. I wear neutral outfits that blend with most environments. But she did.

She was waving at me. I couldn’t see what color her eyes were, but I could tell her mouth was open. She was screaming. Her blonde hair splayed out in the water, a nimbus around her upturned face. Every wave washed over her, hiding her face and then revealing it again. I still don’t know how she got there, 40 or so feet under me. She must have been caught in an undertow. Why she was out there that early in the morning never made sense. I guess some people get up and go swimming at first light. Who the hell knows. Not me.

I’m a strong swimmer. I thought about it for a few seconds. My life was complicated enough. I decided to let her go. I thought it would be better for her. Less pain. I’ve heard drowning is an easy way to die. Peaceful once you stop fighting it.

She went under five, maybe six more times from when I first noticed her. I hadn’t totally made up my mind. If anyone else had been around, I would have gone after her. I was pretty sure I could make the jump without passing out. They taught us how to jump off the sides of ships in the Corps. I had done it dozens of times without incident. The timing was bad, that’s all. Without an audience, I can’t perform the hero role. What’s the point? I’ve seen how it usually ends for heroes.

I thought letting her go would be better for me. The movie of me dragging her back to the beach played in my head. I didn’t want to explain who I was to anyone, or why I was checked in under a fake name, with a woman who wasn’t my wife. The girl’s head went under again, and this time, it didn’t come back up. It wasn’t like in the movies. I never saw the dramatic hand come up one last time and then slide slowly under. A wave covered her face. She was gone. I never got to see her running down the beach, trapped in the false hope of youth, her breasts bouncing carelessly in an overworked bikini, her ass calling out its siren song to every man she passed.

I was spellbound. Lost in thought. I watched the ocean for a few moments. Those waves kept going, crashing mindlessly, endlessly against the cliff walls and piles of jagged rocks down there. The noise soothed me. I finished my coffee and wondered what the girl had believed in.

It rained gently for about five minutes. The drops were far enough apart. I barely got damp.

Most people believe in something. I never have. I think it just goes black and then you rot. I’ve seen death too many times to believe there in something on the other side.

Eventually, I bent down and checked the pistol I always carry on my ankle. It rested snug in its pouch, like always. Then I took off each shoe and shook out the pebbles. I retied the laces carefully.

I walked back up the path to Susan and pretended to be excited about the rest of our weekend. We made love again. Ate the room service meals. Planned our lives out, together while eating eggs. Showered. Got dressed. She in a bikini and me in my neutrally colored cargo pants and t-shirt.

I read to her from the collected stories of John Cheever, and she told me that I could be a better writer than him, that my love letters to her were the best she’d ever read. And I thought about that girl’s face going under. That open mouth in the middle of all that blonde hair. I listened to Susan telling me she loved me, and I stared at the peeling plaid patterned wallpaper on the walls.

We undressed again. Spontaneously told each other dreams, big and little, while I played with her breasts. More lovemaking, slower than before. The bed creaked and banged against the wall. Susan had more energy than I did. She did most of the work. That was fine.

The walls of the room hid us from the world, and the world from us, but only for a brief sojourn. That’s really all you ever get when it comes to good things. Out there are mostly dark spaces and black hearts and small minds. In my youth I was oblivious to them, cocooned. In my early adulthood, I thought I could escape them, and for a while, I did. Then I experienced war, and I knew the reality. The dark spaces and black hearts and small minds eat everything eventually. They will eat me too.

We ate breakfast late, and went down to the beach, following the winding paths along the cliffs. Susan swam in the ocean and I tried to write. I couldn’t. I couldn’t find the words. The birds had come back from wherever they had been hiding that morning when I let her go. The girl.

Today is the first time I have been able to write. I think about death too much. My wars changed me. It’s hard to take much seriously, except fucking and eating. Humans are too fragile and vicious and petty to make long-term plans. Death comes randomly, no matter what you want.

It turned very hot later that day. It stormed too, but only inside my head. That’s where most storms are born. In my memories. After that hot day, the dead girl showed up in my dreams. She was usually bloated. Only rarely did she appear while still fighting for her life. We all fight, but eventually, we lose. No exceptions.

Susan and I continued our affair for another year or two. She ended up getting religion, and telling me I needed to get help. She said she was going to ask for forgiveness, and that I should too. I can’t be forgiven, because there is no god. I hope Susan is happy with the one she made up.

The girl’s body washed up a week later, miles away from the cliffs where I let her drown. Some kids found her. Someone made a Youtube video, probably one of the kids. She was bloated up to several times her living size. Except what the fish had taken as tribute for the intrusion into their habitat. We eat fish. Fish eat humans.

Pieces of her were gone. Toes and fingers and eyeballs. What was left of her skin had gone gray, and her hair was coming out in patches. That water isn’t cold enough – she would have lost the hair and skin in another day or two.

When I finish this letter, I will walk out to those cliffs where I let her go, stare at the waves one last time, and then join my abandoned, hopeless girl in eternal nothing. I want whoever finds this testament to know that I am sorry. Also, you can keep my pistol. You might need a pistol one day.

I should have been a better warrior. I should have been a better husband. And I should have jumped off the cliff that day instead of finishing my coffee and going on with this charade. I’ve been a tourist in this life. I wish it had been different. The time for sightseeing has to end. I wish all of you well. Life is short, and there is nothing after. War is coming. I hope you’re ready when it gets here. I don’t have another one in me. I can’t fight anymore.

What makes writing good

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You probably have at least a passing familiarity with Stephen King. Mister King is one of the better writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. The prolific author has penned more than 40 novels. He is often harshly treated by professional critics, and that is a sure sign that he is doing something right as an author. Stephen King has readers. He has readers because he doesn’t write for critics, he writes for normal people who want to read exciting stories.

In my mind, the best writers don’t give a shit about what the critics think. They write to please themselves. For some, doing so will also mean pleasing an audience. The writer who has good marketing people working for him or her will find that audience. Stephen King doesn’t stop to worry about what other people thinking of his writing. He just keeps doing it, year after year, page after page, novel after story. And his fans fucking love him.

They love him because he knows how to speak to them from the pages. His characters are believable. His plots keep the reader interested from beginning to end. His writing is simple, direct and easy to digest. Stephen King knows how to make words come alive. More importantly, he actually sits in front of a computer and puts the words out there for the universe to eat. He is a wordchef. You won’t find wordchef in the dictionary, dear reader, and I don’t care. Stephen King is a wordchef, and an inspiration to inspiring wordchefs everywhere.

Stephen King’s writing is good food because it is simple, digestible and readily available. There is enough of it to go around, and most people will never get tired of the taste. There are lots of other writers who taste different, and sometimes you will be in the mood for those writers. They come in every flavor and I firmly believe that readers and writers should sample a wide array of flavors when it comes to the words they eat. The prevalent flavor in this article, however, is Stephen King flavor. He wrote a book on the subject, which is appropriately called [easyazon-link asin=”B000FC0SIM” locale=”us”]On Writing[/easyazon-link]. Here are some worthwhile quotes from that man on writing (and what makes it good):

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity. Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it. Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic. Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

What makes writing good? It has to be important. It has to be meaningful. It has to come from the heart. It has to have a point to make. Most of all, it has to flow. If you don’t know how to flow as a writer, then you will never make your point, and you’ll never find your audience.

Start everything at the beginning. Figure out why your story matters. Then make your case. Remind your dear readers of why they the jury agree with you. Ram that shit right down their throats if you have to. Use rich descriptions. Sprinkle in anecdotes that reinforce your case. Figure out the compelling stuff and tell everyone that shit. Wrap it up and poke your reader right in the eye with that sharp spear that is your point, again and again, until they will remember you and and your tale for the rest of however long they have to live. That’s what makes writing good.

1,000 words per day

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It may seem obvious to you that in order to be a successful author, one must actually write. I am dense. It took me 40 years to catch on to this simple truth. When I did, I realized that goals must be set. In my current existence, I work full-time for one of the many corporate entities that make modern life a complete drudgery. Therefore, my daily word count goal is modest; 1,000 words a day is what I demand from myself. I will write 1,000 words per day no matter what. I could have just shit my pants. I may be bleeding from my nose. A gang of midget ninjas may just have snuck in through air vents I didn’t know about, beaten the hell out of me, and stolen all my money. I still have to write 1,000 words per day.

The 1,000 words per day rule is critical. If I don’t follow it, then I never finish a project. Goals are critical, and every writer should have them. Even if you are not a writer, you should have goals. Some examples:

  1. Get laid once a week.
  2. Stay out of jail by avoiding trouble.
  3. Ignore all media coverage of Whitney Houston, and other self-destructive time wasters.
The point of having goals is to ensure that you get things done. People without goals end up watching a lot of Jerry Springer and some of them ending up eating a gun, or 1,000 gallons of ice cream. So then those people are either dead or rolling around the grocery store in a motorized cart, farting a lot and wishing things had turned out different.

Assuming that my first novel is going to be roughly 100K words long, it should take me 100 days to knock out the rough draft. Time to get back to it.

What about you, dear reader? Do you write? If so, what are your goals? How many words a day do you write? What rules keep you on track and focused?