THE SHORTEST STORY

I recently suggested a writing competition to a man of letters with whom I am acquainted and it appears that he actually took some notice of my suggestion and decided to go for it and compose an entry. It shouldn’t have been all that difficult. After all, it was just a short exercise in whether you could tell an entire science-fiction story in a single “Tweet”, or less than 140 characters, and, whilst the time needed to type it might not have been much, the time taken to compose such a truncated epic might have taken weeks.

After all, as a wager, Ernest Hemingway once wrote a story in six words which told of a whole world of pain:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

…and Victor Hugo once had an exchange of telegrams with his publisher where the enquiry “?” was replied to with “!”

In the “pre-text messaging” days of yore, I once tried a similar “?” response to a lengthy email I was sent by a friend of mine explaining about a rather dreadful time that she had been having, but she didn’t see the funny side of the literary humour I was attempting and got rather irate at my lack of empathy in a way that, I suspect, those now brought up in the pithy world of instant messaging, might now not get quite so upset about.

Always ahead of my time, me… (and an idiot, it seems).

I did, actually, enter the contest myself, with four entries, the best of which I think was this: “World’s end, my friend, Empires fall” he shrugged as he licked the last of the flesh from the bones of the reconstituted human.

Cheery stuff, eh…?

Anyway, I tweeted it off and, apart from being “favourited” by a lady writer and academic in Melbourne, I heard nothing more.

My friend, the man of letters, then blogged at length about his experience and told us that he had got an email informing him that his entry had been “noted”, whatever that may mean, and I, ridiculously, got rather irritated at this. Not because he had been “noted” but because I had heard nothing.

Not a dickie-bird.

Diddly-squat.

This, I decided, was all rather typical. The author of these musings is getting rather used to the fact that, when it comes to t’interweb – all the Fizzboks, Twitworlds and even dear old Blogger – he is pretty much “The Invisible Man…”

Hmmm… I respectfully suspect it was more likely a SNAFU of some sort because everyone was probably supposed to get one. Either that or I must sadly conclude that my own attempt was considered to be so very bad that it was decided on some level to quietly ignore its appallingness. However, I also start to convince myself that somehow, somewhere there is always some unforeseen obstacle that gets in the way of me making any progress with anything I attempt to do, especially when it comes to matters of writing my words. Either this sort of misunderstanding occurs, or I lose touch with the players I write my plays for, or other events overwhelm the priority of them, or the readers just do not come, or that they simply are not very good. In this instance, the positive side of me likes to kind of imagine that I entered far too early on the very first morning and the deluge of later entries meant that the first ones plunged towards the bottom of the screen, dropped off and were never heard of again.

Repetition would, no doubt, have been the cure for that, but I’m not prone to repeating myself, especially when it comes to self-aggrandisement. I wonder how many opportunities I have lost over the years with my reluctance to “bother” people any further after my initial contact? Probably not all that many, if I’m being honest with you, because there haven’t been that many genuine opportunities that I can think of, but I do sometimes wonder about it.

I used to think that writing every day would somehow make me a better writer, but it doesn’t and I’m not.

I used to believe it when those in the know said “If you write it, they will come” but they don’t. Sometimes I get “comments” and I even occasionally respond to them (despite the “spit glass in your eye” remark I regularly quote), but only if I feel that they seem to need one. More often than not they are complete in themselves and don’t need me adding any of my inanities to underscore their well-made point.

I used to believe in my own abilities to write scripts that were at least worthy of the time I put into them, but they’re not.

Not really.

I used to think that if people found something they liked, they would pass it on for others to enjoy, but they don’t. Well, it’s either that or I’ve never yet created anything that anyone had enjoyed enough to do so.

Nevertheless, I calmly continue on with whatever nonsenses I spew out and for whatever reason I feel the need so to do. However, sometimes it seems that I no longer have any choice other than to quietly admit to myself at least that, to quote the late, lamented Howard Beale of “Network” notoriety, “I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!”

Except of course, I will continue to take it.

I always do…