May 2013
47 posts
4 tags
On Writing
Sitting down at his midnight desk after a long day on the job, Bill understood the true nature of his work: It was a brutal fistfight with death … one that he was destined to lose.
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The Spy Who Knew Too Much
Forquet, a renowned Parisian tailor, was found dead — shears in hand — at his table Friday afternoon. He was forever silenced, along with the secrets of his powerful clients, by an unexpected and “massive heart attack”.
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A Murky Past
Miller, a wealthy Brooklyn accountant, came home to find a human ear displayed on his kitchen counter. One phone call and seventeen minutes later, he was escorted to a dark van and re-enrolled in the Federal Witness Protection Program.
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The Ad Man
He stared into his gin, and then briefly at the elegantly detached twenty-somethings sitting at the table to his left. He did not have the heart to tell them that he — a balding, middle-aged advertising executive — had created the totality of the reality they were currently enjoying.
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American Woman
He knew she had a S&W .38 in her bag. He did not know about the 13 men she’d drawn down on in California, Kansas, and Georgia. The lounge was about to get loud.
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The Apocalypse
Ford, a gambler from New Orleans who believed The Apocalypse was coming, went all in on a final midnight hand of poker. His bluff was called, and both bets were lost.
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The Actor
Beaulieu, a professional actor, played the role of a master con man on a Broadway stage for more than three years. After the production ended, he continued in the same role, until the FBI ended his successful run seven years later in New Orleans.
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The Wanted Ad
Seeking moment of rest/comfort/peace in midst of hellish war of life. A hot cup of coffee. A damn sandwich. A kind word in passing. Any-fucking-thing. Nights or weekends. Weekdays fine too. Apply within immediately.
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A Writer's Block
Lacking a story, the writer turned to bourbon, which turned into a night in jail and seven new stories in the bank.
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The Crossroads
After a long week of closing complex deals, the Devil was really looking forward to the weekend.
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Deaf & Dumb
It had once served someone, but there in the road, the severed ear lay deaf to our questions.
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Love Story
He used a knife. She preferred a gun. In the end, it was definitely not love that tore them apart.
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The Actor
To find his character, Sauvageau spent months leading up to the show in gambling dens all over the city. His performance was perfect. His bankruptcy is pending.
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The Free University
Graham, profoundly bored with his lot in life, was arrested after robbing a number of banks at gunpoint. Twelve to fifteen years later, he held three PhDs and was teaching Comparative Literature in the south of France.
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The Cemetery Plot
Over four decades, Hinton had masterfully written his way through the seven basic literary plots. He could not, however, write his way out of the abrupt and final one.
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The Starving Artist
The pursuit of literature had left Eugene destitute. Like Rimbaud 137 years before him, he decided it was time to make some fucking money.
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Lost & Found
After 13 years of looking, Anderson, a salesman from Los Angeles, found the envelope. It was empty.
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The Choice
Mr. Auteur, of Manhattan, had been considered an important writer, until he became an infamous socialite.
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The Decision
His audience and talents dwindling, Falk began writing lurid romance novels at 53. His initial inability to sleep at night was ameliorated by a rapidly growing bank account.
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Death & Taxes
Having achieved immortality, the celebrated writer turned his genius toward the more difficult problem of paying taxes.
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Writing in Restaurants
I hadn’t typed anything in three days.
The laundry was done, the bookshelf re-organized, and the beer bottles thrown out.
Even the taxes from the last three years got filed.
I’d read somewhere that all the big boys wrote in cafes and restaurants, and I thought the same strategy might get my own words going again.
Hemingway, Joyce, and Miller had the Paris cafes.
Burroughs had the dens...
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The Politician
After three weeks of telling the absolute truth on the national stage, Ward’s political career was over.
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The Ex-Writer
Depending on how the previous night had gone, he’d write between five hundred and five thousand words a day. Every day.
It was something he’d done since he was a kid.
It wasn’t discipline, as much as a kind of joyful sickness. He loved how the words looked on the page and on the screen. He played with them, tossed them around like toys, and they just kept coming. It was pure,...
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The Email
It was intercepted while passing through Swedish servers on Tuesday night. By noon the following Friday, western civilization was on the brink of collapse.
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The Closer
The sun was shining in Seattle as she walked through the door. It had been six months since I’d seen her, and her purse was thick with money.
I let her pad around a bit, hanging back. She was wearing Armani over Dylan & George, and she had no idea what she wanted on her feet.
That was my job.
George owned the store. He was a shoe genius, a legend in the business.
He traveled to...
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The Four Stages of Fame
For many years, his phone didn’t ring at all. Then everyone wanted him. Then, when they couldn’t get him, they wanted his “type”. And then, when the public had finally seen enough, his phone fell silent, and was disconnected on a sunny Thursday morning in July.
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The Copywriter
“I’m leaving,” he said.
The dog stared at him, ears flat.
“I’ll be right back buddy, you’re a good boy, be right back.”
John got to the sidewalk and took a left. Glancing at his watch, he was on track.
112 steps to the convenience store for smokes, 432 to the Post Office, 23 to Giorgio’s Trattoria for takeout meatballs, then the 567 back to...
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The Singularity
Emma was very grateful to be celebrating her 300th birthday, surrounded by grandsons, nieces, and assorted great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren. She could not, however, keep from silent concern about the 105-year mortgage she’d just taken out on her new amygdala.
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How to Live Forever
Joseph Beermountain had gotten used to the long stares, but the comments as he lurched through town still cut deep.
“Hi Moira, I’ll have uh, have the… uh, cafe au lait please,” he said.
The new voice box had a slight digital tone to it. The doctors said it would adapt over the next few weeks.
He reached for the coffee and felt his arm beginning to give. Joseph pulled...
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Why?
Harold became a writer because he could no longer find anything good to read.
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An Actor Prepares
The pinging started five miles north of Bakersfield.
She was a red 1984 Nissan 200SX, and she’d seen better days.
Every run up to 80, 90, 95 mph on that endless stretch of straight desert Interstate blacktop brought heavier pinging, and by the time we reached the Grapevine it had turned into all-out knocking.
I was about to be an actor without a transmission.
We somehow got up and over,...
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The Bookseller
Ms. Fortin was placing overstock on a very high shelf. At 7:03 pm a stack of unstable Chandlers fell, ending her.
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The Meat Con
The white plastic supermarket bag was in the back pocket.
In thirteen minutes, I wouldn’t be hungry.
I walked through the front door plainly dressed. Without looking at anyone, I headed straight back to the meat section.
Glancing left, then right, I pulled the bag out of my pocket and opened it. In three quick moves I filled the bag with $32.47 in steak.
A meat-cutter, covered in...
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The Daisy
After staring at it for forty-two minutes, he concluded that only God would take the time to dream up something so stunningly beautiful, and so utterly useless.
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The Pepper Spray Kid
“Come on Randy, we’re gonna be late.”
“Dude, I can’t go, I’m gonna be up all night studying as it is. If I fail another Critical Approaches to Art Historical Study test, I’m screwed,” Randy said.
“All those guys are dead man, dead. The protest is alive, and we need you to defeat the Corporate Diablo.”
Three years earlier, Randy...
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The Big Divorce
After the brakes failed, Wilson was given exactly eleven seconds to reflect on the link between marital infidelity and swift revenge.
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The Birth Certificate
I was on a pretty serious lamination jag.
I’d gotten a small machine that came with a pack of one hundred plastic sleeves and was up four nights in a row drinking whisky, listening to Art Bell on the radio and carefully laminating all the important documents.
You could throw three or four cards into one sheet, feed it through there and have those things sealed off into a sleek,...
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True Crime
The killer laughed under his breath while reading a recent bestselling mystery novel. As if he, or anyone like him, needed a reason to open up someone’s neck.
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A Tale of Two Toenails
I had this blood disorder who’s only function was to turn my two big toenails into thick, rotten stumps of human shame.
The pain would come and go, but it was mostly an issue of convenience and pride. I’d slice through socks in a week, had to use a mini power tool to sand the things down, and hadn’t gone barefoot since I was a kid running around Seal Beach.
I’d begun to...
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The Copywriter
Parker was long dead before anyone knew that his lavish lifestyle had been funded by a secret panhandling career in several west coast cities. He’d written the most persuasive cardboard signs in the business.
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Hell is Other People
Olaf and Helga Olafsson had good reason to be afraid.
“Don’t answer that Helga, don’t answer it!”
Someone was knocking on the door.
“I know, I know, go back to your work.”
Olaf kept at the keyboard as the knocking continued. He’d written fourteen books under fourteen different names, all dealing with various aspects of privacy, ID theft, and...
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Not the Best Defense
It was a few hours into the third day of representing himself at trial that Bill realized talk can actually be quite expensive.
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How to Write a Play
Then the idea struck.
“Let’s write a play. We’ll produce, direct, and act in it, right here in Astoria.” Thom said.
“I’ve never written anything longer than a grocery list,” I said.
“Look, it’s easy, all we need to do is think up a good idea, outline it, and then write some dialogue. You don’t even have to write paragraphs for those...
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The Perils of Fame
A corrupt Manhattan stockbroker believed drowned in a sailing accident was recently found living in Amsterdam as a painter under an assumed name. He was arrested at his first one-man gallery show, which consequently sold out.
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The Marketing Plan
Bill was an artist, a painter. He’d been working at the new day job about two weeks when The Boss called him in.
“Bronson, times are tough, but I’ve come up with a new marketing plan.”
“All right,” Bill said.
“I need you to go grab some dark clothes … and a ski mask.”
“OK.”
“Right now Bronson, we need to get...
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The Jihadis
After numerous failed assassination attempts, the ancient cult dropped the writer from its kill list. They assumed a dark and powerful magic was protecting him. He assumed it was merely the bourbon keeping him limber, and got back to typing.
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How to Write a Poem
Write a thousand pages then burn them all without ceremony or sentiment
Read every poem and novel and newspaper you can get your hands on before the age of 21 then stop completely and spend the next decade stealing from and killing your influences[[MORE]]
Stay far away from the writer’s retreats writing groups and MFA programs they can only teach you obedience and false...
