This Side of West

So, a while back I was called in by the up-and-coming ambitious names of the writing future to help out and write a few random things for their literary journal, This Side of West. Yeah, me in a journal. Who'd a thunk? Nevertheless, I raked something marginally respectable together for them to publish. The book is now available for the low, low price of $12.95 (I think?) or - if you use my guest bathroom - you can read my copy for free on the can.

*****

I’ve always liked to imagine that I’m worldly. It makes me feel good, you know? Sitting around my buddy’s ash covered table, twirling a peeled beer bottle, I’ll whip out references to my foreign friends like they’re some kind of celebrity.

“Oh, you know my friend Eduarrrdo,” I’ll say, rolling the “r” to accentuate his exoticness, “was just telling me he might meet me in Prague.” Propping my feet on the adjacent plastic chair, I’ll switch the topic, asking someone about their friend from work because, you know, I wouldn’t want to rub in just how traveled I am. Not outright, anyway.

It takes that special sort of occasion to let myself indulge in full-on, egocentric story telling. I’ll slur my way through a recounting of that one time, in Schwitscherland, when I smoked pot on the train and went to see bears in a pit. And the crowds will ooh and they’ll ahh and they’ll proclaim a new round of Beer Pong in my honour, and I’ll feel awesome.

Then, someone will lean on my shoulder, spilling cheap rum down my cleavage, and suggest I write a story about it.

“Oh, well, the, ah, keyboard could never do such a story, um, justice,” I’ll say, waving down their protests and insisting that my travels are almost too epic to be written down. Then, I’ll retreat behind the plastic cup-covered table, and turn my attention to the crooked projectiles of a friend’s ping-pong ball and away from my ineptitudes as a writer. At home later, I’ll look wistfully at my laptop, before I stumble and decide it’s time to sprawl on top of my covers.

When morning and the hangover comes, I will be no more able to type the story than the night before, regardless of how much more accurately I’d hit the keys. Really, all I’d done was get high and look at bears. Of course they were Swiss bears and it was European pot, but that’s nothing more to write about. Anyone six shots deep would have thought I’d been to the moon, seen a dragon – without a helmet – and lived to tell the tale.

So I leave my laptop out of it, forget that I fail to find inspiration in the setting sun of Schwitscherland, and pick up another Canadian.

“Did I ever tell you that Froweeen wants to visit when I’m in Egypt?”

Curiosity

Every day growing up, I would hear the same thing yelled at me over and over again. “Stop asking so many damn questions!” Honestly. You think I don’t shut up now? Imagine me six-years-old. I wanted to know everything, understand everything, touch everything, smell everything, try everything, hell I even wanted to taste everything. Building with a second door? “Mom, why does that building have a second door?” Man with a muzzled dog? “Dad, why does that dog have a cage on his mouth?” And when he sighed and told me something about keeping its mouth shut (and then going on to mutter something about buying one), I’d look back at the dog with a small “oh”.

“Do all people have dogs with muzzles? Can I have a dog? How old do dogs get? How many kinds of dogs are there? Can I touch that dog? Have you ever eaten a dog? Can I eat a dog?”

The problem is, not a damned thing has changed since I hit puberty and moved out of the house. I swear to god, were you to give me the option of a million dollars or a shoebox with mysterious contents (What could be in it? Flight tickets? A lease to a house in the Caribbean? Oh! A lizard? What about a billion dollars?), I’d be hard pressed to choose the million. And I’m not exactly rolling in dough.

The other day I stumbled upon a tray sitting on a pillar outside covered in mysterious potato-like lumps (Why were they outside? Why were there so many? And on a tray? Were they edible? Who would have put them outside, were that the case?). Naturally, I stopped dead and side tracked to go pick one up. I poked it and squished it and smelled it a little, but just as I was breaking it in half, a man stepped out of the building beside me.

“Put that down! What – did you just fucking think you’d go help yourself to something to eat! Throw that out! I can’t use it!”

Flabbergasted, I backed away from the plastic tray, potato-hunk in hand and told him that I had no idea it was his and had no intentions of eating it. “But… what is it?” The man, however, had huffed his way back through the door without even the courtesy of telling me and I spent the rest of the day wondering what on earth I had just picked up. And the worst part is that I still don’t know what the fuck the thing was.

All that being said, I got a message the other day from a guy I haven’t talked to in two years (I had to ask myself, what’s he doing now? Is he still in Calgary? What does he do with his spare time? How old is he, again? I wonder if he still goes out for drinks.). It was a short, sweet, simple little note telling me he enjoyed my writing. Dope. No, really – it totally made my day. But it made me wonder (apart from what pieces he’s read, whether he usually reads, if he’s been creeping on my facebook statuses, etc.), how many people actually read these things? Honestly. I get so many completely random, unexpected people tell me that they have, in fact, read some of the shit I post online that I really, really, really wonder who reads this. Am I imagining all of this? Am I posting stories to the vast, electronic emptiness that is my future career? Are these people even real?

So, please. Let me know? Because it is driving me up the motherfucking wall.

Pointless Ideas

I’m not sure exactly when, but at some point this spring I got the idea to write about packing. Yes, packing. In retrospect, that’s the most boring fucking thing I could have ever possibly conspired to put on paper. It might even be worse than the “piece” I wrote for a journalism class on the dangers of bunnies; that, at least, was mildly entertaining bullshit. Fortunately for you though, once I got around to writing it I realized a story about packing would likely rank last on my personal list of must-reads and that I would be embarrassing myself were I to actually post anything of the sort. It was also around then that I started to seriously question why anyone reads anything on this damnable “blog.” (Or why I even have one. Ew.)

Obviously, any sort of writer who doesn’t have his or her head shoved so far up their ass they can see their tonsils has to wonder what it is about their stories and their word choice that makes for good reading. It’s the sort of doubt that I can never really shake and tends to come out in full force whenever someone tells me they’ve read something I write. Did they like it? Did they look like smirking idiots at the café? Did they really, honestly, truthfully think my couple hundred words were something worth reading? Especially considering my propensity to write vague, rambling stories about my childhood love for Barbies; why for the love of God would someone waste ten minutes of their day reading that?

In all honesty I’m quite in love with the process of writing in itself. I love setting myself down with my laptop, I love trying to pull together a logical story and I absolutely adore playing with words to spell out exactly what I want to say. What escapes me, however, is what it is about the final product that gets people reading. On days when I’m desperately trying to avoid chores or homework, I get to looking through my notebook and rereading old, half-assed stories and I have to wonder how far up my ass those ideas came from. After all, I don’t see why anyone cares about what goes through my head when I lose a notebook or why I read Cosmo; I sure as fuck wouldn’t (if it weren’t my own).

The worst part, I think, about spending so much of my spare time rambling is that I’m actually trying to make a career out of it. Not only am I expecting people to take time out of their day for my stories, but I expect someone to pay me for it. Yeah fucking right. Who’s about to hand me money for opinions as irrelevant as the snail squashed to my front step? Sure, I get the cursory “I loved what you wrote, T!” from the people I manage to bully, staring them down while they look over a newspaper page I’ve handed them, but it’s impossible to be completely fearless when my future depends entirely upon luck and talent. After all, when was the last time you saw a recruitment agency looking specifically for a sarcastic, highly impatient and egotistical young writer lacking any sort of legitimate experience or professional recognition?

Sometimes, I wish I could just give my notebook away; let someone else run with my many, many, pointless ideas only to post them on the internet. I’ve thought about it. It’s not like I have anything pertinent to say, in any case – unless you define my personal vanity as pertinent. But then, I’d be giving the opportunity to question the very point of spending hours in pubs and hundreds on beer just to yadder on to no one in particular to some other, self obsessed writing student who’s post them on the internet. And I just couldn’t let that happen; not when I have a story-sphere to maintain.

Embellishing Barbie

When I was still young enough to appreciate the unquestionable coolness of a pink leopard print skirt and green high heels, I had a collection of Barbies more developed than that of my current liquor cabinet. It was one of those things that I would silently gloat over whenever school was out and my friends came over to play, snatching the prettiest doll and setting the scene before my friend would even have a chance to browse through the drawerfull. After all, they were my barbies and it was my house.

It was persistently the storyline, though, that was my favourite part. My Barbie, always exotically named and naturally fashionable, would be an actress on an outdoor set who went sky diving off mile high trees in her free time, she would attend her sister as she gave birth to a dead man’s son while trying to cure her friend’s fatal disease, or become enslaved on a distant planet by a treacherous king prone to fits of madness. And, of course, she would end up falling madly in love with a handsome, one armed ken-doll named Brett.

As I got older, my stories evolved from the dramas of your average fairy tale and became the stage to a burgeoning curiosity of the world outside my pink and yellow house. And, really, I blame Brett. By the time I was eleven, I don’t think I could make my way through a play date without somehow working in a nude scene – not that obscenity was actually a concept I grasped; nudity is just fun, you know?

There are only so many ways a prepubescent girl can think of to legitimately get Barbie naked though, and when I eventually figured I was mature enough to wear my own makeup, I figured I was of an age to start writing down my stories. Not to mention that working nudity into a game with my properly raised and god-fearing friends proved to be more difficult than it was worth. I would sit, in what I imagined was the brooding author pose, slouched over my crinkled papers, and stare at the streetlights down the road for inspiration. When I finally pieced together a two page story (and it was often about a girl, say, thirteen or fourteen years old who was rescued from chores, or homework or general tedium by the boy of her dreams), I would come downstairs for chocolate milk and accidentally tell my mom who would simply insist upon reading it, forcing me to hand it over.

Unfortunately, my ability to come up with the sort of stories worthy of a Passions or Lost episode died sometime as puberty was kicking in; I instead became woeful, bitter and, at one point, as deep as an “empty cavern” (whatever that means). Never mind Brett; I was a champion of my tumultuous emotions – the ones hidden by “smiles painted on my face” and unrequited by men who had “forgotten me” allowed me to consider myself truly artsy and brooding. I even carried a bloody book around. Though, looking through it now makes it painfully obvious that anyone with eyes and a passing knowledge of the English language should have told me that rants about immature high school kids do not make for good reading.

Long gone are the days of quadruplets, talking horses and witches in orange jumpsuits. My Barbies no longer play out odd fantasies, and Brett and the girls have made their way into the hands of the next little girl and the next set of adventures; it’s my creativity, though, that seems to have wandered off with them. No longer could I sit you down and tell you the story about the farm girl who fell through quicksand and, well… you can fill in the blanks. The point here is that I’ve come to resort to such bullshit as pretending that my own life is worthy writing material and have spent years trying to pass off my drinking stories as legitimate drama. But honestly, I’ve been wanting to meet a talking horse so bad.

A New Year

Holy fucking shit.

Wait, what did I manage to do now? Did I leave my bra in my parents’ driveway again? Wake up three hours from home or accidentally end up with four guys snorting coke off of my naked ass? No, no, I can assure you that (unfortunately) I am actually quite put together and simply sitting in front of my little laptop as per usual. But… really? Jesus Christ.

It took a couple of minutes to register (alright, a couple beers and a drag or two) but I’ve actually been maintaining my own little corner of the internet for a solid year. A year, people. That’s more dedication to a self-motivated project than I ever would have thought possible of someone who can’t sit still for more than, give or take, five seconds at a time. And the fact that it’s not just a project but a bloody blog? That takes not only devotion, but an acquired ability to force myself to avoid gagging at the very thought that I have joined the hundreds of thousands who believe their mundane, laundry and traffic filled days are worthy of sharing. My ambitions are paired with those who feel it’s their duty to tell us their sister called them fat? Ugh.

I recently decided, though, that I would instead call it my “storysphere” and completely avoid the travesties of labelling my work and my glory as a “blog.” This way, I get to pretend that my eventual infamy is more of a reality than it would be were I just any other 19 year old woman sitting in a pub and publishing completely irrelevant material to the internet. This being obviously impossible, seeing as I really think of myself as more of a chick or broad- never mind woman.

The most fantastically bizarre thing about realizing that I’ve been supplying the internet with my nonsensical opinions and stories for over a year is realizing that there are actually saps out there who read it. Not only have I managed to convince the people who love me, but those who have only my stories to go on to applaud me for being a disaster. On top of it, there are still those who insist I work it like a real writer and try to market myself for my own benefit. Doing what; stripping with my web address written on my tits? Actually, now that I think about it, that just might be a fantastic idea- plus, it’s likely to draw in my target audience and make me all the more eligible to star on Jerry Springer.

It must be said that it is nonetheless more rewarding to know that there are people who appreciate my self-importance over that of the person who believes we care that they got dumped; especially since I never really liked that Humble Pie my mother was always talking about. The most satisfying part about managing to maintain my storysphere, however, is not the underground writer’s scene nor the obvious adulation I come across on a daily basis, but that I get to talk about myself for hours on end and call this “marketing.” So there, basement bloggers! Besides, who gets laid telling people they write a blog?

Encounters With a Writer

How to Calm and Keep Them

Despite the natural abundance of writing persons and general journalists around university campuses and coffee shops everywhere, a legitimate creative writer is often very hard to spot. The creative writer is exceedingly prone to both timidity and sensitivity, thus is easily startled and often bolts upon approach, leaving before any lines of communications are opened or bonds developed. Should you manage to locate a writer and wish to initiate a conversation, or even friendship, try to keep the following things in mind:

1. Should you unexpectedly enter into conversation with someone who you discover to be a creative writer, make sure to respond immediately (as any moments of bewildered silence can cause nervousness), developing a sense of familiarity by relaying some personal connection to the fine arts. While saying that you once read a book may not be quite specific enough, explaining your high school struggle as an aspiring breakdancer should do the trick.
2. Once you have identified the writer, it is imperative that you avoid asking how, exactly, he or she intends to succeed. The creative writer is highly sensitive in regards to this area, and simply stating the question can often remind them that their chances of a legitimate career are dubious at most.
3. Be sure to take a marginal interest in the writer’s work, engaging their ego enough to make them feel satisfactorily artsy, while avoiding over questioning the actual writing involved. The writer needs to be assured of their creative intrigue and mystique, so while asking where he or she will be cashing the cheques is encouraged, it is best to avoid enquiring as to the specific story lines or projects he or she is working on. They are very vague in nature and trying to get a valid explanation from them will only result in grumbling, tangled sentences, and muttered allusions to “no one understanding art”.

Armed with the above tips, your encounter should go smoothly, allowing you the full enchantment of a creative writer’s artistic ego, despite their natural skittishness. Remember, be appreciative and you may find yourself the confidant of many more authorial frustrations and insights than you could have imagined.

Notebooking Nothing

A couple of weeks ago, I managed to lose my notebook. Not an everyday notebook full of class notes, phone numbers or the mundane notions of everyday people, but my own personal notebook. The one with all of my essential memos, the daily “To Do” lists that never get done and the scribbles of erratic ideas that strike me throughout the day. In essence; my soul.

The odd thing about losing my soul, though, was that I didn’t even notice for the first couple of hours; there was no spontaneous combustion, bleeding from the ears, or even loss of consciousness- all of which would have made for a much better story. Instead, I simply went on with my trip, passing by entertaining advertisements whose slogans escape me and giggling at old ladies whose mannerisms I can no longer recall. Boring as the reality of my loss may seem though, it’s the escape of the creative inspiration that could have otherwise marked the remaining pages of my tattered book that strikes me as the deepest tragedy. What if the one story that would have rocketed me to fame and changed the face of humanity as we know it was just beginning to bud in a notebook that I will never see again? There, on the ferry, I had simply abandoned my hopes at renown.

It wasn’t until after I had left the ship and had begun to actively eavesdrop on a couple of entertainingly drunk men riding the bus that it hit me; I had nowhere to scrawl ideas and idiotic quotations. Nowhere to jot down the exact words of their discussion pertaining to diaphragms and whether they were drawn best in pencil or pen and nowhere to make note of a friend’s proclamation that she had put her cat on antidepressants. Where was I supposed to get my inspiration now? After all, a childhood of television had long since disfigured my imagination, so coming up with my own ideas was out of the question.

In desperation, I even called BC ferry’s lost and found to beg the lady on the other end to look for a small, ragged journal that contained my life. From the way she said “Your life then, eh?” I could tell she had lost her eyebrows in her hairline and was wondering how two-dimensional my existence was that it could be restricted to a notebook. How on earth was I supposed to describe the sort of chicken scratch that was so vital to my survival? I almost pity the ordinary person that must have found my notebook full of scribbles, in which the only comprehensible statements were those about “reproductive abilities” or my developed dislike of dryhumping in between mangled Spanish notes about calling my mom. Or that I’m in need of alfalfa. Who the fuck needs alfalfa and what does that even say about me?

Needless to say, it was left to the operator to tell me that no, my soul had not been recovered and, despite her kind words about a call back, the implication that I must be a lonely being to put that much of myself into bound scraps of paper still stung. There I was, left with a ten by twelve void in my heart, and I would have to get over it. I would need to abandon my hopes of ever remembering the kooky words of the bus passenger on acid that evening, or the observations I would make the next day on accents and the scent of piss by East Hastings. So, now a simple shell of my former self, I picked up a little green book I had lying around and began to muse the commencement of a life without the memories of old ideas, ignoring the butch chick reading over my shoulder to make sense of scribbles about “never again seen souls” and “piss perfumed breezes.”

How to Get Rid of Writer's Block

And Other Such Useful Things for Useless Careers

- While spending time in polite company, the moment something remotely interesting and/or obscene is said (pay attention primarily to your own words as they are liable to be the most inventive), jump up, scream “Ah-ha!” and begin scrambling for a writing tool and surface, preferably while dropping your cigarette in someone’s lap to accentuate the drama. The opposite is true while in the presence of impolite company; here, it is recommended that the use of large words such as “exceptional ingenuity” and “incomparable pretentiousness” are frequent, particularly when in reference to your own work, so as to evoke varying theatrical responses.

- It is, in all actuality, exponentially more constructive to the creative brain to continuously envision the final goal as an acclaimed writer (the type of desired praise is entirely up to you) than it is to indulge academics and “professionals” by repeating mundane writing exercises.

- When vacationing in exotic countries, be sure to avoid telling locals how uninspiring their scenery, culture and language truly is; instead, try focusing on original ways to critically dissect everyday objects and rituals, such as changing your underwear or the Q-tip you have failed to discard over the last month.

- While attempting to write in public locations (such as the favourite coffee shop or park bench) and finding yourself stuck in an especially frustrating block, a solid method of forming unique ideas, and particularly inventive dialogue, is to leap to your feet and throw your books at passing strangers, cursing in all of your favourite languages.

- Although it may be true that one of the best creative wells for authors can come from what you know, oft times the subject matter at hand can become highly emotional and too unprecedented to be comfortable; this is best ignored in favour of writing about what we know as a collective of human beings- the colour of love when in proximity to roses, for example.

- If you find yourself to be completely lost for both words and motivation, you can always exchange your beret for blue hair dye and take Modern Art to the next level; begin writing pieces entitled Twenty One Questions with the sole sentence being “Okay, go.”

- After having seized upon a new idea only to discover that a substantial amount of research and leg work is required, the recommended course of action is to relinquish the material to journalists and rather to try for an essay based principally on your own insightful musings.

- When speaking with those who are more talented than you (and who are, coincidentally, better “acquainted” with critics and professors alike), be sure to apologize profusely after having accidentally spilt your coffee down their shirt while trading your respective notebooks of ideas. The latter is also an excellent source for future brainstorming sessions.

- Upon achieving your desired level of fame and/or infamy, be sure to establish and maintain an air of pompousness, to gaze thoughtfully into the distance for all portraits and, above all, to regularly interrupt conversations by mentioning stories or articles that you have written about the subject at hand.

Truly, Procrastination

Procrastination. P-R-O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-I-O-N. An appropriately useful word in all senses if you really think about it; and if you, like all other university students, have laundry, studying or some deodorant that needs purchasing, don’t just examine the word itself. Make sure to search cute images of procrastination, Wikipedia it and do some extensive research into Edward Hall, who first published the word.
It has recently occurred upon me (and I am quite serious when I say that

Quite ironically, I started but never finished this note on procrastination. In order to preserve this accidental eulogy, I have decided that, in this case, my work will remain unfinished.

Seeking UnEmployment

The last couple of weeks or so had introduced me to a much-needed brilliant new story idea (although, admittedly, all of my ideas are brilliant) as I have found that, despite my best wishes, a steady alcoholic intake does not lead to the creativity many of the artistic type claim it does. Instead, it resulted in many unfortunately incomprehensible letters to faraway friends whom hadn’t been witness to a sober me in several months. So instead, between the sober banalities of the daily grind and an unwillingness to spot for my brothers developing muscles (of which, I would like to mention, I hold no jealousy- mine are much firmer anyway), I came to the exciting conclusion that I could detail my life as a waitress lifting plates. Just the sort of pun that I knew would beautifully grace the top of yet another one of my notes.

Unfortunately, I got the boot- and it was a solidly placed one at that. Obviously, I had yet to learn that opinions or basic disagreements with the unjust should not be expressed around women who get paid more than I do. Subsequently, I not only found myself lacking an income, but a solid story idea; after all, I could never lower myself to writing half-truths and invented facts… not without journalism course papers to fuel the need, at the very least.

Being unintentionally unemployed, I took it upon myself to sleep away the better part of the day, wallow in piles of chocolate bar wrappings and aspire to the drama achieved by the woman who had been knocked up by her boyfriend’s brother on Jerry Springer. I found myself near wishing to have been born into a trailer park so that I too could live the dream; fifteen minutes of fame would undoubtedly be much more satisfying on Maury than they ever would be on Oprah (either way, I don’t believe her viewers would be quite as appreciative of my promiscuity). Besides, my target audience would surely benefit from the numerous advertisements played during the aforementioned show to get them off of their respective asses and into colleges for continuing education. Which, as each highly unproductive day passes (unless, as some women might, you include tanning and baking on your list of daily activities), has become an increasingly attractive option. Perhaps it’s time I accepted that my lack of class is not only a thing to write about, but something to truly embrace. All I need now is to figure out where to pick up my employment insurance cheques.

Real Degrees

When my parents pushed a "real" degree (as they like to call it) into my smoke stained hands, I will readily confess that I ran from the house and towards my local coffee shop. It may have been the idea of basement labs and formaldehyde that provoked my outrage or perhaps the devious suggestion that I may even meet some smart men while I was at it, but I couldn’t help but cringe from the thought. I would much rather sit by the ocean gazing off into the distance trying to find the inspiration in construction cranes than dig through pig cells to discover the meaning of life. Interesting it may be (the process of pig cell extraction would admittedly have me sitting on the edge of my seat), but I have a hard time believing any of that is necessary to my own unplanned future.

Oh sure, the science types may be characteristically nasal and bound to be incapable of human interaction, but even I couldn’t deny that there is a certain prestige to a person who has endured hours of lecture willingly. Occasionally while sipping coffee black enough to chip teeth, I’ll notice the frazzle of my roommate’s hair or the glaze in her bloodshot eyes. Further inspection (or in my case, yelling “What the hell happened to your face?”) has taught me that there is a price to be paid for the esteem of intelligence and that “hard work” is apparently more than just a word yelled by parents. However, even after months of my own hard-won research, the belief around my house remains that exam aneurisms make for better stories than the ones that find their way onto my pages.

Getting calls from home only serves to highlight the difference in view points, between what I call work and what my parents call lying around on my ass. My father will ask what I plan to accomplish during this waste of time, my mother will insinuate the question of when I mean to land a ring, and to both I shrug and explain that it really just takes time to uncover the true meaning of inspiration; you can’t rush an artist.

Besides, who wants a smart man?

Apparently

My writing apparently lacks anything of substance, any sort of plot, or anything that would make people jump up and see the world in a new, brilliant sort of way. But somehow this morning, between my right and left pockets and the daily struggle to find my keys, I realized something so fantastically enlightening that I had to rush to my computer to share that information with the world and my facebook friends. I, the ambitious young writer woman that I am, don’t really care.

On a daily basis I plop down (and I mean ‘plop’ in the most literal sense of the word as I’m not one for delicacies or intricacies or even punctuality) beside a student who is sure to be the next big hit. After excusing myself, I can always look over at my prompt comrade and see some sort of sparkle of ingeniousness and new ideas, a small dreamy smile and a face that I’m sure will adorn not the back, but the very cover of their next book. They’re just that good.

Though it’s the little twinkle that will one day grace at least two different Oprah shows I notice when I first look over to gauge my competition, it’s only once I’m thoroughly bored and after a full ten minutes that I start to examine more that just the sparkle. Often times these prodigies and professor’s favourites come complete with a hereditary squint, hairy knuckles, or hair compliments of grandma’s hairdresser and while they’re busy thinking up new ways to approach politics or in depth analyses of the human relation, I explore much more relevant issues. For instance, how did they get to be so hairy? Why wouldn’t they simply go get waxed? Apparently, however, this sort of thing is neither earth shattering nor is it deemed highly thought provoking.

Well fuck that shit.

I may lack sparkle. I may never write a story read in gr.11 English Lit, or even be the author of a novel read by the neighbourhood book club, but I am determined. Determined to continue writing letters to broken bones, plays about nerds because I think it’s funny even though no one else does and stories about crazy ladies who get strangled by their nine cats. I will be as apparently unthought-provoking as humanly possible, as irrelevant as the mouthwash on my table, and as inconsequential as the girl who sits in class and writes about her genius rivals. How this inspiration came to be in my pockets, however, I have no idea.

Option C

As I like to think of myself as an aspiring writer of many and numerous talents (the most notable being the ability to consume the amount of liquor necessary to kill a small horse), the past several weeks have prompted me to begin pondering how precisely do I ‘aspire’? Does this involve me campaigning small magazines to print pieces on the local artwork, the perfect placement of a beret on my head as I smoke and scribble in a small black notebook, or would sitting in my pyjamas in front of my computer after rugby practice count? Personally, I prefer option C.

Option C, however, is one of the few points on any young wannabe writer’s list that gets them literally nowhere. The thing, though, is that I do thoroughly enjoy a good challenge. And it was just as I was enjoying complaining about this desire for difficulty, the resulting complexity my life would become over the next forever and whining in the general direction of a theatrically brilliant colleague of mine, that she kindly suggested I start a blog.

I hate blogs. The entitlement they lend to people to tell stories about how terrible cleaning the cat vomit off of their shoes was is ludicrous. I should be the only one entitled to spin that tale. So fine! I decided that I would blog and I would blog well; so well that I would burn an imprint amongst the properly aspiring writers who spend their vacations baking and actually remember their New Year’s. At this point I rolled out of bed, ready to reveal my frogprint-clad ass and the glory that is my literary works to the world, impressed with the brilliance of my plan and the resulting quashing of the emotional blogs 14 year olds write in their spare time.

Now, the only roadblock to my destiny is the conception of a name to properly title my aspirations… and unless I'm about to call it "Blood Spatter on the Rose Petal of My Heart," that is much more fucking difficult than it looks.