I sat at my computer. Or maybe my computer sat at me. It's a laptop, so I suppose in a sense it sits on you while you sit on it. Well, you don't sit on it, obviously it's my laptop and I don't even know you, probably, so I'd hope you didn't sit on my laptop while it sits on you. Especially not while I'm trying to write a story, because I'm not good at sharing, especially when I'm trying to work. Trying being the operative word, because up until now I've hardly written anything at all. By the time you finish reading this, this is what I'll have written so far:
The writer hunched over his computer in the dark, then looked up, around the room. That was a waste of his time, of course, it was a pretty dark room. The TV flickered. Well, that wasn't true, it was a brand-new bigscreen, not a CRTV from the 80s. The writer frowned; sometimes these borrowed phrases sounded right even when they had no basis in reality. It had never occurred to him to try and observe the behavior of flickering in a television. It was just something televisions did when you had to communicate that there was a character watching a teevee in a darkened room. Just a verb to make the television seem more active, because what other verbs are you going to attribute to it without describing shows and things? Anyway, it was a cliche. He snorted. Or he would have snorted, anyway, if he was the sort of person who snorted derisively when he was alone in the room. He yawned instead, a nice, long one that stretched his jaw. Looking around the room wasn't inspiring him at all. He wondered if it was because he couldn't see anything. He considered turning on the light, but it didn't seem like a good idea, partially because he really didn't want to describe anything he knew that there was to see in his apartment. He had to change something, though, if this story was going to get out of his head. Maybe, he said out loud, if I change the perspective the story will come out easier.
It is pitch dark in your room. You can't see anything, hardly, except your computer screen, the television that's not flickering, and the light of your alarm clock. Well, you can see your own pale thigh, illuminated by your laptop screen. You ignore that, and a bunch of other stuff that's in the room but too hard to see. Besides, you know better than to bore your audience with a list of things in your apartment that are close enough to your computer to be lit up by the screen. You have been writing for nearly half an hour now, and the story is coming along a little better now. You take your legs out from under the blankets because your laptop is starting to burn your thighs, and you wonder--not for the first time--if half a lifetime of sitting barelegged with a laptop across your lap will have longterm ramifications for your virility. Your girlfriend probably wouldn't approve.
The writer smiled as his girlfriend shifted in the bed. He was less frustrated now, the words moving across the page at a safer clip. He was not in the mood to write a long epic. No, just this once he would stick to something a little more in the stream-of-consciousness school. Worry less about narrative and more about making sure his thoughts were laid out on the page as they came to him. Even correcting grammar and spelling errors wasn't necessary, he thought. Of course, he would go back and correct them, but wouldn't it be hilarious if he put a whole bunch of errors in the same sentence in which he declared that he wouldn't be checking for errors? He frowned. No, he'd gotten the joke backwards. It was only funny if someone left a bunch of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes and dangling participles and overlong lists in the sentence about being a careful editor. Even then, it was a hackneyed joke.
He yawned. It was getting late, and the central conflict--that the writer was having a hard time writing--was rapidly being solved. Soon, there wouldn't be much to say, and nobody likes it when you belabor a story.
The writer hunched over his computer in the dark, then looked up, around the room. That was a waste of his time, of course, it was a pretty dark room. The TV flickered. Well, that wasn't true, it was a brand-new bigscreen, not a CRTV from the 80s. The writer frowned; sometimes these borrowed phrases sounded right even when they had no basis in reality. It had never occurred to him to try and observe the behavior of flickering in a television. It was just something televisions did when you had to communicate that there was a character watching a teevee in a darkened room. Just a verb to make the television seem more active, because what other verbs are you going to attribute to it without describing shows and things? Anyway, it was a cliche. He snorted. Or he would have snorted, anyway, if he was the sort of person who snorted derisively when he was alone in the room. He yawned instead, a nice, long one that stretched his jaw. Looking around the room wasn't inspiring him at all. He wondered if it was because he couldn't see anything. He considered turning on the light, but it didn't seem like a good idea, partially because he really didn't want to describe anything he knew that there was to see in his apartment. He had to change something, though, if this story was going to get out of his head. Maybe, he said out loud, if I change the perspective the story will come out easier.
It is pitch dark in your room. You can't see anything, hardly, except your computer screen, the television that's not flickering, and the light of your alarm clock. Well, you can see your own pale thigh, illuminated by your laptop screen. You ignore that, and a bunch of other stuff that's in the room but too hard to see. Besides, you know better than to bore your audience with a list of things in your apartment that are close enough to your computer to be lit up by the screen. You have been writing for nearly half an hour now, and the story is coming along a little better now. You take your legs out from under the blankets because your laptop is starting to burn your thighs, and you wonder--not for the first time--if half a lifetime of sitting barelegged with a laptop across your lap will have longterm ramifications for your virility. Your girlfriend probably wouldn't approve.
The writer smiled as his girlfriend shifted in the bed. He was less frustrated now, the words moving across the page at a safer clip. He was not in the mood to write a long epic. No, just this once he would stick to something a little more in the stream-of-consciousness school. Worry less about narrative and more about making sure his thoughts were laid out on the page as they came to him. Even correcting grammar and spelling errors wasn't necessary, he thought. Of course, he would go back and correct them, but wouldn't it be hilarious if he put a whole bunch of errors in the same sentence in which he declared that he wouldn't be checking for errors? He frowned. No, he'd gotten the joke backwards. It was only funny if someone left a bunch of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes and dangling participles and overlong lists in the sentence about being a careful editor. Even then, it was a hackneyed joke.
He yawned. It was getting late, and the central conflict--that the writer was having a hard time writing--was rapidly being solved. Soon, there wouldn't be much to say, and nobody likes it when you belabor a story.
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