3. Jimwamba

Poor Traits of an Artist as a Young Man: Jimwamba.

For a table of contents of the entire series, click here. 

 

I was looking for a followup to Steam. I wanted to ground the story in my life, take a more Kerouac approach to it. I was about to be a freshmen in college, and all.

So I came up with an idea. I knew it was a good one, because it scared the hell out of me.

A group of people agree to play a game – if one of them is tagged on the back, they must change their life in direct, irrevocable way in the next twenty minutes. Afterward, they can tag whatever unsuspecting player they corner.

People fear change. I fear change, at times. And yet, we’re also very aware that we’re at the whim of change. You can work your whole life to build a stable and secure home only to have a natural disaster or personal tragedy bring your plans to naught.

So what happens if we embrace that? If we revel in that?

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This was Jimwamba. Written in a first person, past-tense confessional style. It was published by a small (now defunct) independent press in the UK called Flame Books. Not a vanity press, not some situation where I’m paying – it’s the other way around. When I was nineteen, I signed my first publishing deal.

For the next entry in the Poor Traits series, click here.