An update: I wrote Day 3’s story in an alternate break room at my day job (on another floor in my same building, where most people probably recognize me by sight but not by name, and where the gigantic vending machines don’t loom over a single uncomfortable table). It’s about a magician, a storm, and a woman.
Yes, I know, it’s always about a woman. I can’t help it.
Day 4 was my first Friday, when I don’t have to be at the day job, though the day job decided to join me at home for a little while. Regardless, I wrote a strange little non-fantasy piece that might be mainstream, might be fantasy (I know, I said non-fantasy and I meant non-fantasy, but I also meant fantasy. Deal with it), and is definitely a reflection of how a boy feels the first time they ask a girl out.
Here’s a picture of me at work.
So far, I’ve discovered a few things:
1. I like the way the fountain pen scratches the paper. I like the sound of it, and the feel of it.
2. Everything so far is a light hearted fantasy, or near-fantasy, though I don’t know what that specifically means about me on a deep, psychological level. Probably nothing. I’m a writer. I write.
3. The first four are all fiction. And the first four are all unplanned, unexpected meanderings, little explorations of a simple idea, even if I try to approach those simple ideas with some degree of complexity.
Here, in fact, is a sample from Day 3:
He’s not particularly good, he’s not talented, and he’s incredibly lacking in wit and wisdom. He is an aging man with gray hair and a Salvation Army suit, a widower and a veteran, and maybe something of a poet in some deep, rarely tapped crevice in his heart, but he has learned three tricks of magic.
And here’s a line from Day 4:
And I know nothing of love. I’m still a child, but I’m willing to learn. I’m anxious to learn. I’m a good, good learner. And I do know something about Romance, because I’ve read a lot of poetry and my father taught me respect and my mother taught me gentleness.
How’s your personal InkStains project treating you?
Honestly don’t know what I’m liking more, the writing or the pictures.
They go together. It’s a package deal.