Enjoy the show;
there's only going to be one function.

After it is done, the walls will be torn down, everything destroyed.
The land purged of any sign, ready to house a theater that might come.

The actors will all leave,
far away go,
to theaters of their own.

Each will forget the role they played.
Each will forget they're in a theater at all.
Each will forget.

But there is one that sees
and remembers.
Nothing is lost even though the actors perish,
even though the theater is torn down.
Everything that is done stays done forever.

So watch your theater,
enjoy the show,
worry not about what's to come,
but worry about how to make "now" the best it can be.

A while ago (actually, I just checked-it was a year ago), I was wondering why it's so hard for me to write fiction. I don't have any issue with spewing random words on my blog about whatever's on my mind. But writing fiction? That's hard.

After some introspection, I came to the conclusion that my problem was (and is) that I care too much about it. I'm just too self-conscious about the whole process. So I had a fun idea similar to what I'm doing now with the word vomits: just write simple prompted scenes, with no expectations.

For the prompt, I would either find it somewhere online, come up with it myself, or ask an AI1 to assign me one. Then I would just write a minimum of 200 or so words. Simple stuff.

Sadly, I didn't keep up with this practice for very long. I remember it was quite fun, so I think the actual issue was that it just wasn't compatible with my schedule at the time. It's a neat idea, though, and one I might start doing again as part of these daily posts. (Yeah, now you'll have a mixture of ramblings with a dash of storytelling practice thrown in here and there.)

As I'm going through my notes, I see there are some "exercises" that aren't actually all that bad! In an effort to break the ice between us with this whole storytelling business, I thought it would be fun to post a couple of these past ones :)

This is the prompt for one of them:

Write one paragraph about a person sitting in a coffee shop. What do they look like? What are they thinking about?

And below is what I wrote.

Ellen sat down at the coffee table, taking care not to spill any of her coffee. It was late, but that didn't mean the work was done-not yet, at least.

"Still have to take care of those damned permission slips", she said to herself.

While waiting for her coffee to cool, she brought up a book on her phone that she'd been trying to read for the last couple of days. However, her eyes kept unfocusing, and she found herself having to bring them back again and again.

When she came back to, the café was now empty, the lights off, the door closed.

"What the hell?"

Getting up, she walked to the counter.

"Hello? Is there anyone back there?"

Silence...

She tried opening the front door, but it was locked. Then she checked the bathroom window and found it was partially open.

Looking around the café, she eventually found a broom handle that she could use to push the window open.

SMACK... as she fell on the floor on the other side.

"Ouch.."

The road was empty. She didn't know exactly what time it was, but it seemed late. Very late.

As she thought this, a black car screeched around the corner and stopped with a squeal in front of her. A young man opened the car door and motioned to her.

"Hurry! Come inside! We don't have much time."

Footnotes

  1. I'm not sure how good this is, but I assume that as AI models improve, one might be able to send it what one produces and get better-targeted prompts-maybe even useful feedback. Though for the time being, I really don't trust AI feedback on anything I write; it's either always "awesome", or it tries to make me sound more businesslike. ↩