LJ Idol Prize Fight: "A Fresh Perspective"
Feb. 9th, 2019 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halfshellvenusA Fresh Perspective
idol prize fight | week 15 | 1000 words
Periphery
x-x-x-x-x
Marty Bartlett wanted to be a writer. In other words, he had ideas he wanted to foist off on the general public.
For money.
He was not alone—many people shared the same dream. In fact, the Internet was full of books and online courses with titles like, "Novel-Writing By Numbers," "Financial Backing: Fleecing Your Friends And Family," and "Oh, So You Really Think You're All That?"
Marty, who had tried many of those books and courses himself, was convinced he had what it took to achieve greatness! There was just a small problem in that… well, he hadn't managed to pull it off yet.
He had the time to devote to writing, and he had all sorts of ideas, he was sure of it. But no matter what he did, none of them ever seemed to add up to an actual story.
Marty tried creativity exercises, mindful dreaming, and long walks along the river. He made a nice welcoming space in his house just for writing, and when that didn't work he took his laptop to a coffee shop, a car wash, and a duck pond to see if that helped. The results were underwhelming.
He used a recording app on his cellphone to capture his thoughts on the go. Many of those thoughts seemed to be grocery-related, but the concept had merit. Besides, it was so easy to get distracted.
One day, Marty was busy mashing words together to form some kind of plot for a book. He took a short break to get something from the car, and as soon as he stepped off the porch, a bright blue thing with wings and a tiny little face flew right at him and nearly hit him in the head.
"Gah!" Marty yelled, ducking out of its path as it bombarded him with an explosion of glittering dust.
"Sorry!" he thought he heard it shriek, which was ridiculous.
"Note to self," he gasped into his phone, "check the shed for bats! And take the pants in for dry-cleaning on Monday."
Ugh. At least it hadn't gotten in his hair.
Marty was so focused on bat-cooties that he forgot why he'd gone outside in the first place, and didn't remember until the following day. That was the shape of life in general for Marty, as far as writing went.
His real job took up a lot of time, of course, so he tried to make the most of his opportunities at home. Nights and weekends, Marty scribbled on notepads, drew cryptic diagrams on a whiteboard, and hammered away at his computer keyboard. It was like trying to bleed genius, if genius was a turnip rotting in a root cellar from two years earlier.
Most Saturdays, Marty holed up in his home office and worked for hours. Kids and lawnmowers made a racket outside, and the phone or doorbell interrupted him all too often.
The first Saturday in April was typical, with two robo-calls on the phone before lunch and someone knocking on the front door that afternoon at two.
Marty opened the door to some cat in a business suit.
"Good afternoon, sir!" the cat said.
"No thanks!" Marty said, slamming the door shut. Geez. The door-to-door salesmen in his neighborhood were always so aggressive.
He tried putting the dog outside to keep people away from the yard, but the dog barked at everything, which was worse.
Maybe a change of scene for a bit? It was hard to write a spy novel about manly men battling cryogenically-frozen Nazis when you were surrounded by the ordinariness of your daily life. Marty decided to drive over to the beach and find a nice bench on a cliff overlooking the ocean.
It was dark when he drove back, tired and discouraged by his low word count and the sense that his novel was either totally unworkable or had already been done.
He soon found himself behind a gigantic orange blob on wheels being pulled by a team of fine white horses.
Slowly.
"Oh, for crying out loud!" Marty said. The drivers in this part of the state were such a pain.
He veered to the left, looking for an opening. Minutes later, he finally sped around the thing, honking his horn as he went.
"Road hog!" he yelled out the window.
By the time he made it home, Marty was exhausted. He went straight to bed.
The next day he was back at it, trying to think of something else to write now that his spy novel was no longer destined-to-be. But what? Marty thought. There had to be something. Fighter-planes on Proxima Centauri B, mutant wombats, zombie robots, anything, so long as it had legs.
He wandered around the house, he did jumping jacks, and he ate M&M's until his stomach felt like sludge.
Finally, he decided it was hopeless.
He needed something much more drastic to help him find new ideas, something that would take him outside of himself.
What Marty really needed was a vacation.
He called a travel agent and laid it out for her, along with his budget, which was regrettably small.
"I don't have much in that price range," she said. "We'd be looking at something domestic, and not very popular."
"Did I mention I was desperate?" Marty said, standing in his kitchen and feeling as if fate had no mercy on him at all.
"Yes, sir, I'll keep looking."
The dog came in from the living room and pushed past him on its way to the fridge for beer. "What a crap fest. The Cavs are playing like garbage," it said. "They've got no outside game…"
"Do you mind?" Marty said. "I'm on the phone."
"Sir? I could send you to Toledo," the agent said.
"Toledo, fine. I'll take it."
"Really?"
The dog rolled its eyes and left the room.
"Lady, I'm serious," Marty said. "I've got to get out of here and find some inspiration. Nothing ever happens in this town!"
--/--
If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries here.
idol prize fight | week 15 | 1000 words
Periphery
x-x-x-x-x
Marty Bartlett wanted to be a writer. In other words, he had ideas he wanted to foist off on the general public.
For money.
He was not alone—many people shared the same dream. In fact, the Internet was full of books and online courses with titles like, "Novel-Writing By Numbers," "Financial Backing: Fleecing Your Friends And Family," and "Oh, So You Really Think You're All That?"
Marty, who had tried many of those books and courses himself, was convinced he had what it took to achieve greatness! There was just a small problem in that… well, he hadn't managed to pull it off yet.
He had the time to devote to writing, and he had all sorts of ideas, he was sure of it. But no matter what he did, none of them ever seemed to add up to an actual story.
Marty tried creativity exercises, mindful dreaming, and long walks along the river. He made a nice welcoming space in his house just for writing, and when that didn't work he took his laptop to a coffee shop, a car wash, and a duck pond to see if that helped. The results were underwhelming.
He used a recording app on his cellphone to capture his thoughts on the go. Many of those thoughts seemed to be grocery-related, but the concept had merit. Besides, it was so easy to get distracted.
One day, Marty was busy mashing words together to form some kind of plot for a book. He took a short break to get something from the car, and as soon as he stepped off the porch, a bright blue thing with wings and a tiny little face flew right at him and nearly hit him in the head.
"Gah!" Marty yelled, ducking out of its path as it bombarded him with an explosion of glittering dust.
"Sorry!" he thought he heard it shriek, which was ridiculous.
"Note to self," he gasped into his phone, "check the shed for bats! And take the pants in for dry-cleaning on Monday."
Ugh. At least it hadn't gotten in his hair.
Marty was so focused on bat-cooties that he forgot why he'd gone outside in the first place, and didn't remember until the following day. That was the shape of life in general for Marty, as far as writing went.
His real job took up a lot of time, of course, so he tried to make the most of his opportunities at home. Nights and weekends, Marty scribbled on notepads, drew cryptic diagrams on a whiteboard, and hammered away at his computer keyboard. It was like trying to bleed genius, if genius was a turnip rotting in a root cellar from two years earlier.
Most Saturdays, Marty holed up in his home office and worked for hours. Kids and lawnmowers made a racket outside, and the phone or doorbell interrupted him all too often.
The first Saturday in April was typical, with two robo-calls on the phone before lunch and someone knocking on the front door that afternoon at two.
Marty opened the door to some cat in a business suit.
"Good afternoon, sir!" the cat said.
"No thanks!" Marty said, slamming the door shut. Geez. The door-to-door salesmen in his neighborhood were always so aggressive.
He tried putting the dog outside to keep people away from the yard, but the dog barked at everything, which was worse.
Maybe a change of scene for a bit? It was hard to write a spy novel about manly men battling cryogenically-frozen Nazis when you were surrounded by the ordinariness of your daily life. Marty decided to drive over to the beach and find a nice bench on a cliff overlooking the ocean.
It was dark when he drove back, tired and discouraged by his low word count and the sense that his novel was either totally unworkable or had already been done.
He soon found himself behind a gigantic orange blob on wheels being pulled by a team of fine white horses.
Slowly.
"Oh, for crying out loud!" Marty said. The drivers in this part of the state were such a pain.
He veered to the left, looking for an opening. Minutes later, he finally sped around the thing, honking his horn as he went.
"Road hog!" he yelled out the window.
By the time he made it home, Marty was exhausted. He went straight to bed.
The next day he was back at it, trying to think of something else to write now that his spy novel was no longer destined-to-be. But what? Marty thought. There had to be something. Fighter-planes on Proxima Centauri B, mutant wombats, zombie robots, anything, so long as it had legs.
He wandered around the house, he did jumping jacks, and he ate M&M's until his stomach felt like sludge.
Finally, he decided it was hopeless.
He needed something much more drastic to help him find new ideas, something that would take him outside of himself.
What Marty really needed was a vacation.
He called a travel agent and laid it out for her, along with his budget, which was regrettably small.
"I don't have much in that price range," she said. "We'd be looking at something domestic, and not very popular."
"Did I mention I was desperate?" Marty said, standing in his kitchen and feeling as if fate had no mercy on him at all.
"Yes, sir, I'll keep looking."
The dog came in from the living room and pushed past him on its way to the fridge for beer. "What a crap fest. The Cavs are playing like garbage," it said. "They've got no outside game…"
"Do you mind?" Marty said. "I'm on the phone."
"Sir? I could send you to Toledo," the agent said.
"Toledo, fine. I'll take it."
"Really?"
The dog rolled its eyes and left the room.
"Lady, I'm serious," Marty said. "I've got to get out of here and find some inspiration. Nothing ever happens in this town!"
--/--
If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries here.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2019-02-10 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-10 02:32 am (UTC)It's hard to be that oblivious, but some characters just are.
It does make you wonder what else is going on around him that he doesn't notice, doesn't it? The Hindenburg could be burning over the back fence, and he'd probably complain that the neighbors were letting their barbecue get out of hand. :D
no subject
Date: 2019-02-10 03:40 am (UTC)my father actually is that way to an extent and this reminded me of some of his shenanigans!
bahaha The Hindenburg could be burning over the back fence, and he'd probably complain that the neighbors were letting their barbecue get out of hand. :D that is gold! (also kind of reminds me of the time my father was in the kitchen with his back to the table and my dog managed to drag a bag of vegetables off the kitchen table causing them to scatter all over the floor. the noise of the potatoes rolling about prompted my father to ask me - i was in a different room - what i was doing before he turned around and saw what was actually going on!)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-10 08:07 pm (UTC)Your dad might have thought the dog was better-behaved than he actually was.
I wonder what it thought it wanted with those vegetables-- especially raw potatoes? Or maybe it was the sense of possibility and victory, and then
*snorf* Never mind...
no subject
Date: 2019-02-10 10:04 am (UTC)The alternate explanation is that talking animals and pumpkin coaches are normal for him in this world and so while to us worthy of story, to him they're not ;)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-10 08:13 pm (UTC)I really wanted to write fascinating things happening on the periphery of someone who was completely oblivious to them (like mistaking a fairy for a bat), because I love unreliable narrative.
By the end, you can also see it the other way, that the weirdness is his version of ordinary. OR, it's also possibly that he thinks it's normal for dogs to fetch beers, and what he actually hears instead of kvetching about the game is, "Yip! Yip-yip-yip-yip-rarf-rarf-rooooooo."
no subject
Date: 2019-02-10 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-10 09:22 pm (UTC)I get such a kick out of stories where the narrator is oblivious to what is incredibly obvious to the reader, and this prompt was perfect for that idea.
All sorts of fascinating things are happening right there, but the narrator doesn't fully see them. It's the opposite of having a runaway imagination-- he normalizes interesting things right down to the mundane. :D
For all we know, the dog is just passing the time with the neighborhood when it's out on the porch, instead of just barking its head off.
And regardless of how many self-help books or vacations he tries out, Marty is never going to be a good writer. :O
no subject
Date: 2019-02-11 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 02:28 am (UTC)Hahahaha!
Is there or isn't there a troll living under the back deck?
What about an insect circus in aisle 5 of the local Safeway?
Wait, you didn't KNOW? :O
no subject
Date: 2019-02-11 07:58 pm (UTC)I do feel a little sorry for your protagonist! If it's happening all the time to him, it must feel ordinary, even if it's not! :)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 02:31 am (UTC)I think things feel ordinary to Marty because he reshapes them into his very limited worldview, and thinks they ARE ordinary. How many people would think a fairy was a bat? It's almost like running things through a Mr. Magoo filter. :D
no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 01:36 am (UTC)Pretty sure I've got that one on my "Books to Read" shelf. :)
This was pure genius. And I get those same robo calls, but I think I'd notice a blue fairy.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 02:33 am (UTC)And I like to think I would be able to tell the difference between fairy dust and bat guano/plant pollen. ;)
Thanks for reading and commenting!
no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 09:16 pm (UTC)Writing events from the perspective of an oblivious narrator (where the reader knows what's happening but he doesn't) is always a challenge, but it's so irresistible. I get a real kick out of it. :)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 08:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 09:19 pm (UTC)But, in away, he's kind of a clueless person in general, so I think even if he went ahead with something like his zombie robots idea, it would be 1) bad (obviously bad!) and/or 2) potentially somehow boring. :O
no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 09:21 pm (UTC)The cat at the door was deliberately ambiguously worded, so there would be the possibility of it being either. But is is actually a literal cat, an given how Marty is, it's entirely possible that he just saw it as a random (possibly very small and hairy) person. :O
Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 09:26 pm (UTC)And I'm so glad it grabbed you and pulled you in. This character, and his incredible inability see what's actually going on around him, was a lot of fun to write. :D
no subject
Date: 2019-02-13 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-13 06:24 pm (UTC)The LJ Idol competitions are a wonderful place to meet other writers who do original fiction and original non-fiction, so it's a great opportunity to try a different kind of writing. Plus, you can join without competing, so you could get a feel for what goes on there and see if you'd like to try participating as a writer? If that would interest you?
That's how I got into original fiction. I wrote only fanfiction for years, but joined as a means of trying to stretch myself. It's been great!
Are you thinking 'in time' means after your dissertation is finished? That is a daunting piece of work, but you're making real progress on it. :)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-13 09:24 pm (UTC)Yes. I'm not allowing myself to write fiction before that. The diss has been going on for so many years, and I've been procrastinating and having no idea what to do for too many of them, now that it's actually working out, I just have to keep going. Sometimes I have trouble believing there is life after a diss. But as far as fiction goes... I write all my ideas down. Also, I have one main plot that I keep thinking about from time to time (it's going to be long) and one short-story-thingy that I want to practice on, and when I really-really can not help it, I work on it's outline. But as I say, I'm not allowing myself much of it, because. Should I finish some day (fingers crossed!), I'll definitely also try LJ Idol! Till then, I'll watch you and know there is original fic online, there are people one can talk to :D
no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 09:27 pm (UTC)The idea of this stubbornly ordinary guy with an entire universe of weirdness on his periphery that he doesn't even notice? REFUSES to notice? That was just too much fun to pass up.
Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2019-02-16 12:52 am (UTC)