Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 56

Missing a day or two

E. Christopher Clark:

Yesterday, for the first time since launching Draft a Day on November 6, 2014, I failed to publish a new piece of fiction. I’ve been late before, sometimes pushing up against midnight in other time zones, but I’ve never totally missed a day. Yesterday, I did. I will miss today, too.

Clark is one of a couple of people (hi Kate Kennedy!) who have inspired me to try to not only write a little everyday, but publish it every day too. I hope to have something up today, but I know (and you know, and I know that you know) that if I miss a day, it's fine. It doesn't mean I'll get sad again, and it doesn't mean I've given up writing forever. Before I started this daily writing exercise, I hadn't written anything meaningful in about a year (I'm not counting my last attempt at a book as something meaningful). But sometimes life gets in the way of the thing that makes you happy enough to do the life thing. They can be good things or bad things, but they'll take time, and they can make you forget that thing that makes you happy when they're not around making you too busy to think about the dumb thing that makes you happy (like writing everyday, or whatever it is you do). And while it's going to be pretty impossible to not  let stuff get in the way, it's important to find some kind of hook to get you back to the mindset that put you (and me) on this path, where doing that little thing everyday was the result of a set of decisions about your own personal well-being, and how it affects others, when they do pull you away. 

Sorry if that was super mangled. I'm still figuring this feeling out. 

Anyways, Clark, you're good people. I look forward to reading your stuff when you return. 

 

Writing Practice, May 16 2015

Contest #5

Gerald went on a game show and lost. It didn't matter to anyone but his wife--the lovely Maggie--who promptly began seeing the winner of the game show, an otherwise unremarkable woman by the name of Beth. Beth was married herself, but her husband wasn't much for contest winners, and after the show aired felt decreasing affection for Beth. But Beth's husband--contritely-named Joe--didn't know Gerald, outside of seeing him on TV that one time. Anyways, he didn't see a future with Gerald, as what little he knew about him didn't reveal much to recommend. Even Joe knew the question Gerald got wrong.

Beth noticed Joe wasn't as into her when she invited him into bed with her and Maggie. Maggie didn't much care for Joe, as he hasn't won anything, except perhaps Beth's heart at one time or another. But she would have gone along with it to please Beth. Joe didn't share her spring enthusiasm. He moved out and took his dog. Maggie and Beth are still over the moon.

Beth didn't fully consider Joe's feelings, but winning does strange things to the heart.

Gerald found himself alone for the first time in many years. He hadn't grasped the tenuousness of their union. But knowing that his marriage was on the line wouldn't have changed his answer. Raising the stakes doesn't make someone smarter. But Gerald became a devoted quiz show trainer. He drowned his wifeless time with trivia. Once he felt confident--all Maggie's things long since excavated from their leased walkup--he applied to several quiz shows. This was back in the day (or was it off in the near future?) when quiz shows were very popular. He was accepted to all of them. Judges loved his story. They loved how he might tell it. They loved how he might lose more.

Gerald sent a letter to Maggie, telling her to watch as he tried to win her back by being some kind of winner. (This was back when people wrote letters. Or perhaps in the future when all the computers break and we're stuck with the Post again.)  Beth opened it and threw it away. She hadn't ever done anything that cruel before, but winning does strange things to the heart. Maggie didn't get to see Gerald win, if he had in fact won. Beth didn't own a TV, since Joe had taken it along with the dog. 

Writing Practice, May 15 2015

Contest #4

Jessie S, the social media addict, the minor Youtube sensation, the crimson-red-head with the eyes that made you forget what elevator you were in, she’d just been on television, man. It seemed somewhat retro and a whole lot of Elvis-in-Hawaii, but she’d been on a game show. She could still feel the tape on her shirt from the oversized faded-yellow nametag. “Jessie S” it read in fat black ink, rounded just so that it was a little too obvious a human didn’t write it. She’d been posting about the game show throughout the entire thing. The show was looking for a connected contestant. She was just known enough to qualify. “Known enough,” was their exact same phrase. She had two hundred thousand followers.

The game was pedestrian. It was mostly a quiz, but there was also a tornado machine. Jessie S already had a few hundred photos of her on Instagram in that thing. “Whateverings,” she whispered to her room. Jessie S--the S standing for nothing--locked the door in her San Fransisco apartment that nobody in the world could afford, and laid straight the hell down on the oversized cheque they gave her at the end. It was made of cardboard, but also of money, conceptually. It represented something, and she’d been suitably excited on TV, though more people would see it on Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr and other places that were ostensibly not TV, somehow. Mostly, they were different in that nobody who watched her clean house on TV would issue her a direct death threat. She would get those everywhere a keyboard was connected.

The death threats used to come from faked accounts, but the social networks felt pressure from shareholders to protect their users from anonymous threats. So the fake profiles were mostly gone, but that barely stopped the threats. Instead, she just received them from real people with real names, traceable evidence that would legitimately lead back to the real people behind the harassment. Police even arrested some! There were consequences. But there were still so many death threats, all day, every day, and triple on days when anything nice happened to her. She would get a ton of death threats today. She felt them coming as she lay on her giant fake, representative cheque.

Writing Practice, May 14 2015

Contest #3

Her office put her up to it. They even printed out the form. Fill it out, they said. It'll be fun, they said. She never took a vacation. She didn't even own a TV. Lana Really, executive and probably one day vice president, didn't have a lot of good time time. She didn't know anything about the game, but her colleagues filled her in. It's great. Each round is unpredictable. You can't prepare for it.

The prizes seemed strange. Lana could win cool stuff, for sure. There were trips to far away islands. There were makeovers and gadgets. Someone even won a monthly stipend for the rest of their life. She could quit!

"Why would I quit?" She asked. "I love my job."

Well, maybe you'll win something else.

So Lana did it. As with most of her endeavours, she crushed it. Blew past the qualifying rounds. Lana got on the show, and she broke records for time, distance, and three other things she didn't think they kept score on. She mentioned the company by name three times, and they emailed her about giving her a raise just for all the free publicity. And then she won, and she was congratulated by hunky models and the audience and the host, this beautiful woman with a hairstyle she kind of wanted after seeing it up close (and gabbing about backstage).

But the grand prize was what people really tuned in for, because it was never the same thing twice. The producers chose prizes based on what they felt the accepted contestants would really want, more than anything in the world. They didn't tell the contestants what the prizes might be beforehand.

The beautiful woman with the incredible hairstyle handed Lana Really an envelope. All she had to do was open it and read the card tucked inside. She could react however she wanted. She could take the prize, or leave it, but she had to say what she was going to do on the air.

She flipped open the card with her excellent fingernail. She was nervous, but the cameras couldn't catch it. She read the card, and said it allowed, surprised and confounded, alarmed. Bewildered.

"I've won a family?"

Writing Practice, May 13, 2015

"Can I have a minute to think about it?" He asked with sweat, more sweat than anyone but a perverted god could know. Wells, as his friends and boss called him, had spun the wheel. He'd won this contest with guile, luck, etc., and the cameras broadcast on a ten second delay to people thirsty for catharsis. He had a scrape on his knee from a scuffle in the second round. He'd thankfully remembered some grammar rules during the first. And now he was here, in front of the bloody huge wheel.

 

The game show host, festooned in a ghastly garment of prom blue and neon yellow, holding the thinnest microphone technology could concoct, smiled like a maniac in love. "Let's put sixty seconds on the clock for our winner."

 

This was the signal for a commercial break. Even though four minutes of ads would play, Wells still only had one. He knew what would happen. He'd been prompted by an intern backstage about all the options. To even appear on the show, he had to sign more papers than he did for his mortgage.

 

He knew going in that not all options on the wheel were easy choices. That was the whole idea: Present the winner with a real opportunity, at a real cost.

 

But Jesus Christ, he really thought it was going to land on new car. All he had to do there was get into an accident--on live television--with his old one, and total it. He would be allowed to wear protective gear, and it was somehow legal (though how was any of this legal? How did this game get so much pull?)

 

But the wheel landed on Family. It was one of the toughest choices on the wheel, and one of the strangest ones to watch. The premise, which he'd spent the last thirty seconds of his remaining sixty tumbling in his mind, was devilishly simple. If he accepted the prize, Wells would win many millions. But it would go to his husband and children. Wells would have to say goodbye to them, and really to everyone in his life. The game would move him somewhere, and it would be illegal for him to ever contact anyone he knew. The goodbyes made for award winning television, though the network never really named the awards.

 

Wells knew this was one of the things on the wheel.

Writing Practice, May 12 2015

Contest #1

Gwyn drinks water. She sits in a restaurant. Across from her is a date. It is their first. A little music plays, but she doesn’t hear it much over the chatter of other people here to also have dinner, some of them even on dates. But they probably aren’t on dates like she’s on. Across from her sits a man, and she’s burying the lead, even in her own mind, where this narrative is playing out in real time. The man looks typical enough. He is wearing a light sports jacket, which she has to assume is warm and comfortable and stylish. She doesn’t really know for sport jackets. She only knows that they’re called that because her grandfather liked to wear them at almost every occasion, whether it was too nice or not nice enough to warrant. She is burying the lead, thinking about her grandfather, and she knows she has to talk. She has to talk, because he won’t. 

Gwyn’s friend at work set them up. Did she know? She couldn’t have known. 

“You won a contest?” She asks, desperately. It’s been minutes of her just asking yes and no questions. This man, who looks typical enough, began the evening by motioning towards his mouth and making it as clear as he could that he could not use it. Gwyn, who is wearing a lovely purple and white dress, who tried really hard to get to this unnecessarily tough-to-find restaurant on time, only got to the question she asked through a series of other questions she did not think she’d be asking. 

Questions like: why aren’t you talking? 

Questions like: wait, this is a choice thing? 

In a few minutes, after the man who gave his name by way of his business card (Nate Wells, psychiatrist, phone number, email) she gets over the confusion and moves right onto incredulity. But she wouldn’t get there for a few minutes. She would live in the confusion throughout the entire bread-stick portion of the meal. 

“What kind of contest forbids you to talk?” Gwyn asks, the words slipping out of her too quickly to mask the judgment. The man answers with his hands. He has not been miming for very long. He is far from good at it. He’d lose as a sober game of charades, which this is because the cocktails are only on their way. 

“I don’t understand,” she says, not understanding. Not particularly wanting to understand. Not particularly wanting this date to continue, only minutes after shaking his by-choice mute hand and peering into his by-choice mute-but-still-cute brown eyes. Would it be cruel? Would she be inconsiderate to leave at this point? 

“How long do you have to be silent to collect the money?” She asked, assuming there is money involved. She should have asked if he won the game or lost, or if it was still going. Nate puts up one finger, then twirls it around 360 degrees. 

“So if you stay silent for a year, you win a lot of money?” She asks. He shrugs, and makes a “kind of” hand signal that only kind of communicates “kind of.” 

She has more questions, she tells him. She can ask them. She can spend the entire evening asking questions, and then probably more nights. And then maybe he would have questions for her, she suggests. She suggests this as inevitable. I’m interesting, she says. I’m confident about this. He smiles at the braggadocio. And in that moment, of her explaining and him listening, they have a moment. It isn’t romantic, but it is enough for her to order an entree. 

 

Writing Practice, May 11 2015

A man holds me a brochure. I palm it and don't look down. I don't really know what's in my hand and won't until I sit down and get bored. And I wont get bored for a few more minutes, until I've fully digested a slap of a fact: I am unnoticeably average. It stings for the reason it should, and the reason you'd guess. Before I entered this room with a disorientingly high ceiling and hundreds of disappointingly low chairs, I did not think I was average. I thought if I put in some considerable effort--and if this effort was focused on fitness and fashion--I'd stand out, be remembered, and perhaps even progress in life the way exceptional people do, in all the serendipitous ways in which they do it.

Other exceptional people have entered times like I just had. They had brochures handed to them. Or was it cigarettes? I wanted cigarettes. In that moment, more than feeling like I'd been sold a lie, I wanted a great goddamned smoke. Smoking would make me stand out.

What I saw was over a hundred other men who'd also thrown dice at this fashion and fitness lie. Stone had done slightly better than others, and better than me. Some relied more on the fashion than the fitness. These mingling men, in person and on their phones, fell for it just like I had. What was the point of working out and buying expensive sart if not to look uniquely better? It made not only all the time and money feel like a waste, but it also cast doubt on my taste. There were at least three other men in my eyeline with the same exact shirt, and those guys looked liked assholes. They probably thought I was an asshole too. They had the right. What fight could I even put up?

 

Writing Practice, May 10 2015

The boy was ten years old. He sat atop luggage in the back of a lane-wide box van. It was the first time he'd done either thing. The luggage piled so high his head would occasionally bump the ceiling. He had no seatbelt, nothing to strap him down for safety. If the van came to a sudden stop, the boy would probably slingshot into the back row proper, where three older men he'd only meet once. He only knew one of their names. No, that wasn't right. He knew one name and one nickname. The boy didn't know the third guy by any name.

The highway was smooth and new and dark. It was midnight. The boy was wide awake. His parents had given him permission to go, and while the exhibition had been mostly a dull disappointment, the ride to and now back was the memorable thing. The men told stories and jokes. The boy heard a lot of words for the first time.

This was the kind of trip that probably wouldn't be allowed in modern times. The boy carried no identification, and he'd spent half of the $20 his mom had given him on lunch and snacks throughout the day.

He barely remembered the event itself, but the hollow loud sound of air in such a high and empty warehouse-turned-arena was still with him. Every now and then, he tried to make the most himself but couldn't.

He also remembered the sound of canvas.

The boy wouldn't talk about this weekend to his friends at school. There was a new game. Nobody was really listening to anyone. 

Writing Practice, May 9 2015

Dallas was a boy's name, wasn't it? But that's the name she heard through the glass. She had to repeat it aloud just in case, and because of policy, and because it was a pretty name, now that she'd given it half a second of thought. 

"Dallas? Like the state?" She said, immediately remembering that it was a city.

Dallas, on the other side, didn't correct her. 

Dallas, on the other side, held up identification. It confirmed everything. 

She thumbed at papers and wrote her name, giving Dallas permissions she herself didn't have. She asked to see the ID closer. It was a colour she'd only seen a few times this year. These were new cards, and were not yet mandatory. She peered close at the hologram and other security details. She had no doubt of Dallas' authenticity. But there was still a question she liked to ask. 

"Dallas, are you who you say you are?" 

Dallas, who up until this moment had only paid a sliver of slight attention to her--was truly paying more attention to the optimistic pastele palate adoring the walls, the nearby flick of a man's finger against a magazine, and her own internal thoughts that mostly told her to eat something--opened her eyes and focused. She no longer saw the walls around her, thin plexiglass meant to…what? Protect her? But in this moment the little walls were gone. All colour went quiet. Colours, Dallas learned in this moment, can apparently do that. 

Still, her stone cold composure kept up, and she was able to say "Yes, of course," and hear her laugh on the other side of the plexiglass. Dallas wondered what would happen if she'd said no. If she'd told the truth. 

Writing Practice, May 8 2015

They were trapped underground, and they felt the weight of earth coming down on their heads. The oxygen in the small stupid space they'd concocted was being too quickly replaced by their own quick, panicked breaths. Their legs were already crushed under rock and soil, and the sound of gravity and leverage meant it wouldn't be long before both brothers of a famous man were truly buried. 

"Bye, Torq." One said to the other. He thought, why did we do this? He'd been thinking that since they'd stopped screaming for help, when the hope ran out and the turquoise stones shon black around them. 

The brothers of people you've heard of made the news. Every newspaper, checked social media, and information tv in the subway displayed half a sentence or more about a daring and preposterous stunt gone awry. Newscasters and bloggers alike scratched away at the facts and did their best. People with jobs in the field summed up their theories on camera.

The brothers were looking for attention, surely. They were trying to make a statement about something cultural, or political, presumably. They were trying to steal something, perhaps. They knew the truth about something none of us knew the truth about, and tried to do something about it, maybe. 

"Those boys were murdered," a woman with too much fame spoke in a room populated with lawyers and hats.

"There's no evidence," a hat said, not to the woman with too much fame, but just aloud. The hat then said what everyone pretty much thought. "They were stupid, and they did a stupid thing."

"Not my boys," the woman with too much fame said. She was now the woman with too much fame and two buried sons. She was now two things.