From something new I started today:
HIs dreams are carnage. Plane wrekcs and oil explsions, manholes burst skyward by steam and heat, the iron discs falling on taxis and busses and cars and people. Women and men scream skyward, thrust their hands to the clouds in a vain attempt to stop the heavy hail. And when they come down, the manhle covers seem mutiplied. Thousands crshing and busting asphalt, crushing kids. The screams and all. And Namtk stand with his mouth side open, almost like he can see himself standing there, the black discs raining around him until finally he spies one overhead, comeing down and down to him, and he can’t move, like hi feet are stuck in hardpeend cement, his legs paralyzed. He wtches i grow bigger and bigger, blotting out the sky until finally he, too thrusts his hand above his head and watches his wrist bckel, his forearms shear and break, the splinter of bone through his skin and his shoulders undone before he wakes with a start in his soft bed and heas his wife breathing sleep beside him.
He pads to the bathroom and shuts the door, knows to liftt against the hinges to close it the last six inches so it doesn’t squeak. HIs wife after him since they moved in to fix them. A little oil, a little silicone. He knows she’s right, too. When the door is closed he turns on the light and sees his red-rimmed eyes in the mirror. His good looks still there, his hair cut high and tight. Wonders a moustache. Maybe. He rusn water and splashes his face, tries to wash away the memory of his fractured arms, his shoulder popped from their sockets. The pain there like a phantom pain, like he’s read and heard from old vets when they wake to itching feet they lost years ago to IED or more recently to diabetes.
I used to worry every word as I wrote them. I’d stop to correct spelling and grammar, fuss over sentence structure. I found I spent more time hitting backspace than I ever did making words. So I stopped doing that. I stopped hitting backspace and stopped worrying over every little thing. Now when I write the inklings of a story, I just let it come. Any way, shape, or form. I let it come and soil the screen and write day upon day until I can’t write my way out of it any more. Then I print a copy, sit in a quiet corner and use a bright red pen to get my fictional bearings. When I’m done with the slash and burn, I start on a clean, new document—blank screen—and decipher and translate my editorial bloodbath into a new, clean document. And that one? That’s draft one. The other stuff’s just notes to get me there.
