Feedback Friday :: What if…?

bulk :: 12st 11

mammoth walks :: 2.5

proper exercise :: 0

cigarettes smoked :: 0

bottles of wine drunk :: 1

new reviews for the book :: 1

bleak moments :: a few

high hopes :: a lot

blinding realisations :: 1

 

The book is dead! The book is dead!

 

Those are the bleak moments.

 

Thankfully, they are few and far between and thankfully, as Mark Coker, the guy behind Smashwords, points out again and again, ebooks are immortal. ‘Welcome to the never-ending book launch!’ My time will come. Plus I’ve been working very hard all week on lots of things related to the book. So we’ll see. Keep hope alive.

 

In the meantime, there’s this, which – I suppose – you might call a poem…

 

What if…?

 

What if I’d got married when I had the chance and now I had three kids and no time to waste still trying to be something I’m not?

 

What if I married the wrong twin?

 

What if I caught a train to a place that didn’t exist and by the time I got there, I was completely invisible?

 

What if my fairy godmother appeared and was about to grant me three wishes when I sneezed right in her mouth and she changed her mind?

 

What if I fell in love with someone across a crowded room and it turned out it was just my own reflection in one of those weird new mirrors

 

What if I had a magic umbrella that rained on me whenever I put it up in sunlight?

 

What if I was given 24 hours to live and I decided to spend them in a hammock, eating crisps?

 

What if my boss was berating me and instead of looking ashamed, I just smiled, put my finger in my mouth and started making popping noises

 

What if I joined the army and from the very first day I repeated everything my commanding officer said in a voice like Donald Duck?

 

What if I was being tickled by an old lady with six hands and I laughed so hard that my belly button came undone?

 

What if I discovered my kisses could heal the sick, but I didn’t bother healing anyone because I was too shy?

 

What if I wrote an ironic song called ‘Kissing Robert Mugabe’ and Mugabe heard it and asked me out on a date?

 

What if I fell down and sprained my ankle but insisted to everyone that I had broken my crown?

 

What if I cried ‘Wolf!’ in a pretentious art gallery and people assumed I was an installation, and then they were all eaten by the wolf?

 

What if I declared a thumb war on a boy with no thumbs, then I shouted ‘I win hands down!’ and the thumbless boy poked me in the eye?

 

What if I became Prime Minister and passed a law forbidding the wearing of scarves and then Audrey Tautou knitted me a really nice one?

 

What if I started making a man out of dough and raisins and then halfway through I realised I was making Jimmy Carr?

 

What if I coined the word ‘sporange (n) a meaningless word specifically invented to provide a rhyme for ‘orange’ and the OED gave me an OBE?

 

What if I invented a new drug that made people not want to take any more drugs and all the drug addicts took it and got addicted?

 

What if neo-Nazis bought up all the Kindles in the world and burnt them?

 

What if the Three Little Pigs, having pooled their resources, got a place together, and the wolf just came in through the window?

 

What if one day all the world’s religious people suddenly said, ‘OK, let’s stop this. It’s silly…’ and then it started raining human eyes?

 

What if the princess from The Princess and the Pea stopped being such a moaning, self-centred cow, got off her arse and got a fucking job?

 

What if, in The Princess and the Pea, it wasn’t actually a pea at all, but was in fact a tumour?

 

What if kittens were carcinogenic?

 

What if Jesus came back and just as He was about to start preaching again, He lost His faith and started talking about Justin Bieber?

 

What if I stuffed a cushion up my jumper and said, ‘I am a hunchback!’ and then the wind changed and I was blown down a hill?

 

What if I took off all my skin and meat and muscles but instead of finding a skeleton, I found a 15-year-old Anne Frank playing Solitaire?

 

What if I made a kite of human skin but the moment I tried to fly it, the sky filled with the screams of all my victims?

 

What if instead of beards, all men could grow a profound empathy with womankind?

 

What if God existed but instead of a decent, all-loving deity, He was a despicable, unremittingly odious sociopath?

 

What if EL James and Dan Brown had a baby that grew up to be a really good writer who couldn’t get published?

 

What if I keep plugging away at the book, then suddenly it breaks out, sells over a million copies and my life completely changes?

 

Seriously though. What then?

 

 

This weekend I’m staying indoors and writing. What about you? You doing anything spectacular? Do tell. Without you I’m nothing. 

 

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