Creative Writing
My fourth grade teacher, each month, jotted down some seasonal words on the chalkboard, which the class was to base a short story around. So, we go from the start of the School Year and Autumn in September to Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas and the start of Winter, and so on.
I kept the same characters throughout — a character that was clearly me (and nearly had my name) to the point where if I wrote something self-depracating coming out of his mouth, the teacher would write a “No, You’re not” in the margins. (Also, interestingly, he went to an elementary school that was named after me — seemingly only due to the fact that Arthur Smith and I share the same middle initial… How very narcistic of me!) I started the first story with the character standing in front of his brother’s grave-site, bemoaning the recent death of Jim. (Who quickly materialized as a ghost, and scared the bee-devil out of me/him.) So, I killed off my brother and brought him back as a ghost… one who really only played a pivotal role in the Christmas Carol story (frightening the principal as the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future — and, don’t I know you from a couple years ago?).
I don’t know who the hell Jim was. There was a character named “Zeff”, watching Star Trek in the background. But, then again, it is fiction, and literary devices are hard to come by.
The next year, in service for an assignment on a hated Children’s Literature classic Roller Skates, I turned in a scratchy and wonderfully ugly piece of artwork — which has the appearance of having been inspired by the comix of Gary Panter (Never mind my unfamiliarity with Mr. Panter). (Featured on it were every word that rhymes with ‘itchy’, as a descriptor to the main character.) A few years later, my brother insisted that I keep it. My actual teacher was less impressed with the piece, but that’s the way things work.
Fifth grade, and I write a story about a kid’s Near Death Experience. Some tattle-taling busy-body glances up on the screen as I’m typing (it would have had to be someone who’s name is alphabetically just after me, as we were typing in alphabetical order) — and tells the teacher that I have curse words. The teacher knows better — that the word “God” and “Hell” are not curse-words in the context of the story, and thus the busy-body is kindly pushed aside.
[7th grade later.]
I turned in a piece in eighth grade entitled “Norman Edwards Meets the Seimese Twin Brother He Never Knew He Had”. There, Norman suddenly learns that he has a cojoined twin brother — a head right next to his, who has been living a life entirely separate from his all along. His brother lobs Norman’s head off. While going through his day, with people thinking that he’s Norman, this Twin Brother is confused with Norman… which prompts profound guilt in (I forget his name). His guilt builds to the point where he decides that he has to end his life, and assume the identity of Norman. We conclude with him shouting out the window of his apartment, “And You Can Call Me NORMAN!”. The teacher replied with “You can call him ‘Norman’, but you sure can’t call him ‘Normal'”, which — actually, would be a more succient ending.
My Senior Year of high school, I turned in poems such as this one. For a work of fiction, I wrote “A Dada Murder Mystery”, wherein Private Investigator Marcell Duchamp and his assistant Max Ernst set out to solve the murder of a woman’s husband. It’s a stupid story, and the only thing I can really say about it is that the main suspect was a “Nudist Descending a Staircase”, and that I included an ending that was a muse of mind: the private investigator — having assured his client that he has a perfect tract record of solving these murders, at the end, saying that the case is pretty much unsolvable, while handing over the bill. (And, I snuck in the line “Well, who do you think did it?” “Actually, to be honest, I think you did it.”) The other idea I had would have been titled “[Name of British Literary Masterpiece found in Textbook] as Read by an Emotionally Stunted Student with a Short Attention Span Such that He Loses Focus Mid-Way Through.” It’s a five page limit, so the story would have gone on for two and a half pages as a condensed version of events of whatever story I’m incorporating. (“The Importance of Being Earnest”? Wuthering Heights, which holds the advantage / disadvantage of being a story I could not follow? Who knows?) At which point, we’d have a character shouting out “Oh My God! We’re being attacked by a horde of Vampires!” — and whatever internal disputes are going on would have to be put aside to deal with the horde of attacking vampires. The easier path was the Dada Murder Mystery, thus this story remains… unwritten.
I was either going to write a piece of deconstuctive dada fiction, or I was going to write… a piece of deconstructive dada fiction. What The Hell — Was I on drugs?
I’ll finish this post sooner or later.