Another day another dollar.
I love clichés.
Back in the day, when I was living in Australia and I wanted to be a writer, I tried the Stephen King method (as he wrote about in On Writing; an excellent read if you’re looking to learn a bit about the famous writer and procrastinate your writing for a bit). That meant that I was writing two thousand words a day, every day.
I think that was the only rule, but this was roughly ten years ago.
I wrote two novel-length manuscripts in the time that I was down there. The first one was pretty easy. I wasn’t working when I arrived, so my days were pretty relaxed. I’d usually make a pot of coffee and have a big breakfast, reading something light. After that I’d roll a cigarette and have some more coffee on the porch. Then I’d tackle my two thousand words for the day.
After that I’d head into town to my favourite café, the Athenaeum, where I’d order another coffee (a long black) and sit outside smoking and reading. Then I might head to the used bookstore, or drive an hour to one of the bigger towns for something to do.
There was a woman named Marg who ran the Athenaeum. During the day it was a coffee shop, and at night it was an Italian restaurant. Everything I had there was great, but the carbonara was especially fantastic. In my experience, Australians do a great carbonara.
It was hard for me to make friends in the small town I was living just outside of, but Marg was always really nice to me. She hated pretty much everyone, but she liked the fact that I read because she liked to read too, and she felt that no one else in that small town read. I think she smoked as well, so having me sitting outside rolling my cigarettes, drinking my black coffee, being polite (as a Canadian must) and reading a book was interesting to her. In a town where everyone knows everyone, having someone new is kind of exciting, I guess.
I miss that time a lot.
The writing I did was absolutely terrible. I’ve learned from reading (and confirmed through personal experience) that not all writing is good when it first hits the page, but what’s most important is the act itself. Get words on the page, because editing is easier than writing, and there’s no sense in limiting yourself from the get go.
One of my stories was about a space station on the moon. The idea, if I remember right, was that this was the second attempt at a permanent base on the moon, as the last one had gone through some terrible accident and everyone had died. There were a bunch of different scientists all doing different research, and two psychologists who were there to make sure everyone stayed sane.
The reason for the two shrinks was that the “terrible accident” in the first attempted moon base was related to the astronauts all having psychological breakdowns.
In this story, you follow one of the psychologists as he watches everything start to get strange. It seems like there’s another presence on the moon and he starts to have dreams about these shadow figures. Eventually, our hero begins dreaming that he’s working alongside these figures, building out scaffolding on the edge of the moon. The dreams start to feel very real, and the entire time he’s asleep, he’s working on building the moon. There’s a little foreman’s house and everything. He wakes up and he’s too tired to do anything, but can’t sleep. He feels like he can’t get any rest.
I can’t remember how it ends, but I don’t think I’ll be able to read it again. It’s living as a .docx somewhere on the hard drive here, having moved with other stories and photos from laptop to laptop over the last ten years.
One of the things that I’ve found really nice about this little exercise is that I’m getting inspired again. For example, yesterday’s space tailor story was a lot of fun.
Oh, I almost forgot, the reason why I started this one off with
another day another dollar
is because when I was rereading one of my stories, with the intention of editing it into a potentially finished product, I noticed I’d used the cliché
the more things change, the more they stay the same
three times in the first chapter.
That’s too many times. Whoops.