The Story of Josh Part Nineteen … I am a Writer (Installment #4): I can write anything better than you!
The Story of Josh Part Nineteen … I am a Writer (Installment #4): I can write anything better than you!
OK, the only way I was allowed to come back to this chilly shit smelling chamber was if I let the shadowy raspy voiced man blind fold me. I’m not sure but before he bound my eyes he sort of came into the half light of the alley I was meeting him in and I swear to god the fucker was wearing a cape and cowl … but that had to be my imagination.
Oh well he’s kind of mean mugging me from the corner he is standing in so I guess I better get started.
This is, as always, a therapy session and my new strange doctor is in.
I can tell the exact moment when I realized that I was a better writer than someone who had already been punished.
OK, maybe not the exact moment but at least within spitting distance of the moment.
My maternal grandma always gave me books on my birthdays and on Christmas’s. While my cousins and siblings would usually get a ten dollar bill of a gift certificate to Meijer or Target I would get a brand new paperback book. And grandma would always tailor her purchases to what my current interests. When I was first deep into Sci-Fi she would give books by Bradbury, Clarke, and Asimov (Grandma bought me my first copy of Foundation which kind of changed my life btw). When I turned toward horror it was all Dead Koontz, and in my sophomore year of High School I was enthralled with Techno-Thrillers.
Grandma had bought me several Tom Clancy books during that phase which I loved but for my birthday she got me something new. I opened my brick shaped present and was greeted by the sight of a book that I had never heard of by an author I had never heard of. I will not use the real names of either the book or the author, let’s say the book was called Poisoned Water and the author was Bill Bright. I was not perturbed by this as my grandma usually had a good nose for picking out things that I would like.
This was grandma’s one stumble in all of the years that she was my literary hook-up.
The book was just bad. I don’t mean bad in an ironic Mystery Science Theater 3000 way, it was just bad. The story was languid the characters were wooden and shallow, the action was … well there was no action and the environment and setting were like something out of a 1950’s TV Western. At best one dimensional and wooden.
I really want to like the piece of dreck since grandma had shelled out her hard earned clams for it. But I couldn’t, the best that I can say is that I managed to drag my way through it and finish it … then I threw it away.
That is the only time that I ever trashed a novel.
I knew that I could write better than that. Fuck I knew that most of the little assholes in my creative writing class could write better than that. That stupid mother fucker Mr. Gibson (not his real name) the only teacher that I ever went nose to nose with could write better than that.
This was again in my sophomore year of High School. I was attending Wayne Memorial High for what I did not realize would be my last year. No … switching schools every two years and never really being able to make friends for most of my life didn’t fuck me up at all.
(There is the pity party and warped view of history for this session)
Mr. Gibson was the only creative writing teacher at Wayne Memorial and as soon as I was able I signed up for the class. It took less than half of a class to me to realize that he and I were never going to compatible. He was I decided after to listening to his overly soft and melodically rolling tales that he was a sixties collage kid who had been too much of a pussy to go to Vietnam and too much of a rod in the ass to become a hippy.
He didn’t teach, I can honestly say he was the only teacher I ever had who didn’t teach. He was so fucking absent minded that he could never remember when he had said that assignments were due. The only students he ever paid any attention to were the females and I’m saying he wanted to fuck them but he was always finding an excuse to stand to close and lay a hand that was just this side of inappropriate on them.
There were some really good writers in that class for a High School group. Look I know it sounds arrogant but when we did peer reviews of works I always seemed to do really well, I don’t think I was the best writer in the class but I believe I was in the top three. When we worked in writing groups and Mr. Gibson stuck to checking out which one of the budding sex-pots and waitresses had neglected to wear a bra that day I really enjoyed the class. It was fun to get honest feedback from people that just wanted to give feedback and not just tear people down, which was what Mr. Gibson always seemed to want to do.
We were told we could write a short story about anything we wanted for a project one week. I wrote a story about two former lovers that met up in the ruins of post apocalyptic New York City. In this story a plague had killed most people (still in a huge Stand phase) but some people who had been given a experimental vaccine before the fall had become immortal after they had seemingly died. These Immortals ruled over the few human survivors that had been immune to the sickness.
This was the one story that Mr. Gibson liked of mine. He took it home and let his son read it. The kid apparently liked comics and was familiar with the same storyline from X-Force that had inspired the immortals in my story. He came at me and accused me of plagiarism. I asked him how it was plagiarism since I was using a plot device and had not stolen any storylines.
We went back and forth and he told me if I submitted it for a final grade it would get an F.
I should have showed some balls and went to the principal about it. But I did not I did what I always did for most of my life. I pussied out and turned in another story that I had been writing. What I did turn in was a decent story and I was just as proud of it but the first story (Love in the Ruins) was also something I was proud of and it should have been graded on its own merits.
Mr. Gibson was then and probably is now a fucking asshole.
OK, we are done today. The new therapist says that I shouldn’t have been such a pussy and I should have just punched the fucker. I find it odd that a therapist would have advocated such violence … but the idea also kind makes me hard.
But I digress, he’s bringing out the blindfold and it’s time to breathe some fresh air.
OK, the only way I was allowed to come back to this chilly shit smelling chamber was if I let the shadowy raspy voiced man blind fold me. I’m not sure but before he bound my eyes he sort of came into the half light of the alley I was meeting him in and I swear to god the fucker was wearing a cape and cowl … but that had to be my imagination.
Oh well he’s kind of mean mugging me from the corner he is standing in so I guess I better get started.
This is, as always, a therapy session and my new strange doctor is in.
I can tell the exact moment when I realized that I was a better writer than someone who had already been punished.
OK, maybe not the exact moment but at least within spitting distance of the moment.
My maternal grandma always gave me books on my birthdays and on Christmas’s. While my cousins and siblings would usually get a ten dollar bill of a gift certificate to Meijer or Target I would get a brand new paperback book. And grandma would always tailor her purchases to what my current interests. When I was first deep into Sci-Fi she would give books by Bradbury, Clarke, and Asimov (Grandma bought me my first copy of Foundation which kind of changed my life btw). When I turned toward horror it was all Dead Koontz, and in my sophomore year of High School I was enthralled with Techno-Thrillers.
Grandma had bought me several Tom Clancy books during that phase which I loved but for my birthday she got me something new. I opened my brick shaped present and was greeted by the sight of a book that I had never heard of by an author I had never heard of. I will not use the real names of either the book or the author, let’s say the book was called Poisoned Water and the author was Bill Bright. I was not perturbed by this as my grandma usually had a good nose for picking out things that I would like.
This was grandma’s one stumble in all of the years that she was my literary hook-up.
The book was just bad. I don’t mean bad in an ironic Mystery Science Theater 3000 way, it was just bad. The story was languid the characters were wooden and shallow, the action was … well there was no action and the environment and setting were like something out of a 1950’s TV Western. At best one dimensional and wooden.
I really want to like the piece of dreck since grandma had shelled out her hard earned clams for it. But I couldn’t, the best that I can say is that I managed to drag my way through it and finish it … then I threw it away.
That is the only time that I ever trashed a novel.
I knew that I could write better than that. Fuck I knew that most of the little assholes in my creative writing class could write better than that. That stupid mother fucker Mr. Gibson (not his real name) the only teacher that I ever went nose to nose with could write better than that.
This was again in my sophomore year of High School. I was attending Wayne Memorial High for what I did not realize would be my last year. No … switching schools every two years and never really being able to make friends for most of my life didn’t fuck me up at all.
(There is the pity party and warped view of history for this session)
Mr. Gibson was the only creative writing teacher at Wayne Memorial and as soon as I was able I signed up for the class. It took less than half of a class to me to realize that he and I were never going to compatible. He was I decided after to listening to his overly soft and melodically rolling tales that he was a sixties collage kid who had been too much of a pussy to go to Vietnam and too much of a rod in the ass to become a hippy.
He didn’t teach, I can honestly say he was the only teacher I ever had who didn’t teach. He was so fucking absent minded that he could never remember when he had said that assignments were due. The only students he ever paid any attention to were the females and I’m saying he wanted to fuck them but he was always finding an excuse to stand to close and lay a hand that was just this side of inappropriate on them.
There were some really good writers in that class for a High School group. Look I know it sounds arrogant but when we did peer reviews of works I always seemed to do really well, I don’t think I was the best writer in the class but I believe I was in the top three. When we worked in writing groups and Mr. Gibson stuck to checking out which one of the budding sex-pots and waitresses had neglected to wear a bra that day I really enjoyed the class. It was fun to get honest feedback from people that just wanted to give feedback and not just tear people down, which was what Mr. Gibson always seemed to want to do.
We were told we could write a short story about anything we wanted for a project one week. I wrote a story about two former lovers that met up in the ruins of post apocalyptic New York City. In this story a plague had killed most people (still in a huge Stand phase) but some people who had been given a experimental vaccine before the fall had become immortal after they had seemingly died. These Immortals ruled over the few human survivors that had been immune to the sickness.
This was the one story that Mr. Gibson liked of mine. He took it home and let his son read it. The kid apparently liked comics and was familiar with the same storyline from X-Force that had inspired the immortals in my story. He came at me and accused me of plagiarism. I asked him how it was plagiarism since I was using a plot device and had not stolen any storylines.
We went back and forth and he told me if I submitted it for a final grade it would get an F.
I should have showed some balls and went to the principal about it. But I did not I did what I always did for most of my life. I pussied out and turned in another story that I had been writing. What I did turn in was a decent story and I was just as proud of it but the first story (Love in the Ruins) was also something I was proud of and it should have been graded on its own merits.
Mr. Gibson was then and probably is now a fucking asshole.
OK, we are done today. The new therapist says that I shouldn’t have been such a pussy and I should have just punched the fucker. I find it odd that a therapist would have advocated such violence … but the idea also kind makes me hard.
But I digress, he’s bringing out the blindfold and it’s time to breathe some fresh air.
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