February 21, 2024
I have so many stories in my head.
Worlds, really.
There’s one set in a giant city that looks like a mixing bowl made of white stone. The houses are square and small, the streets are dirt, and atop one edge of the bowl there’s a giant metal bull.
There’s one of a boy with a voice in his head beckoning him to run and of a girl who lives in something called The Tree, but The Tree is not a tree.
There’s one about six friends- do you know the type you’ve had for so long that you sometimes wonder if all that’s keeping you together is history? A story about those friends unraveling that very question while they witness other people make lifelong promises to each other.
There’s one about dysfunctional families and pet birds. Don’t ask me about that one, I’m not sure where it’s going yet.
All those people, all those cities, all those feelings, they swerve and they swerve within my skull and I don’t have sufficient time or endurance to pour them out fast enough. They’re banging on the sides of my brain and screaming to be let out, like a kid that’s way past due, which is funny because I came into this world 10 days late and even then it wasn’t by choice but by use of a plunger. Karma? Maybe.
People say we don’t write like Shakespeare did or paint like Monet used to anymore, but those were men with benefactors, allowed decades to hone their skills and just create. They were given time to absorb the pain of London streets and the beauty of water lilies because people recognized the value of doing just that.
I’m working on one of my stories right now, one of the long ones. I think it’s good but I think I can make it better. I hate that I also have to think about whether companies will see the market value of it enough to pay for the paper it needs to be printed on (because paper is expensive right now apparently). I am so good at selling other people’s stuff but so lost when it comes to my own.
Anyways. The point is, I need time to turn the worlds in my head into words.
But to buy time, I need to use my time. And then time starts sifting through my pores and I take mortgages on my sleep but after the third one my body tells me to find another source of income. Is it time to consider the creeps offering me sugar in my DMs?
Hopefully, that time will never come.