I’m Just a Precocious Nine-Year-Old

   And when I was a precocious five-year-old I thought to myself, why is it that children of talent have made names for themselves in music, mathematics and so many other fields but not literature? (Apart from Ashley Daisey but then again her book, written at the age of nine, was a pile of tripe on trifle.) At five I realized that I had my work cut out for me and I set about reading and writing in a rigorous regime that covered everything (imagine a Rocky montage but with a kid doing push-ups over a pile of Penguin Books). And so four months ago I started this site, which begins with a Moby Dick kind of first line, and I’ve been writing a short-short story everyday since. Each day I pretend to be somebody I’m not in order to play with various frames, after all fiction always comes encased within at least one narrative frame or another. Well I threw myself at the idea of creating a story within hundreds of frames. Imagine that Rocky montage again but this time with Robert Rauschenberg – R.I.P. – in his heyday placing a frame within a frame within a frame within a frame, and on and on over a hundred times.  I wanted to create a literary equivalent of that. I figured that would get a nine-year-old some modicum of recognition. So without further ado: hello, my name is Andrew Kincaid.

   And here I am embarking on my head start to a literary career.

   Because I know puberty is going to fuck me up for a while.

 

Rejection

 

   I know I’m neurotic. I know one of my strengths is that I’m neurotic. I think that’s one of my strengths. You see, an hour ago I was trapped between two decisions which had grown to such a size that I felt – figuratively speaking - that I was squeezed in between two walls. The choices were pressing up tight against both sides of my body. I couldn’t move. I was standing outside in the mid-day sunshine trying to decide whether or not to post something. My right hand held a large manila envelop over the mouth of a mail-box. If you post this you will become a pariah of the publishing industry, I heard a voice inside alliterate. I usually try not to pay any attention to that inner alliterative voice because it’s simply niggling worries megaphoned into something noisy and distracting. My theory is that I have a subconscious stutter which manifests itself into alliterative thoughts. I mean that’s just a theory but it’s odd that my inner voice always comes equipped with at least three parallel consonants. I mean why? So there I was in a stand off with a post office box trying to decide whether or not to mail that envelope which contained a creative non-fiction submission for a magazine contest. The piece itself consisted of critiques of fifty rejection letters that I’d received over the years. I thought it would be funny to write reviews of all the rejection letters that had piled up in my closet from PRISM, sub-terrain, Geist, Event, the Walrus and Prairie Fire. In a high-falutin’ stuffy tone, I trashed the editors’ choices of verbs, nouns and logic, e.g. “Ostensibly, Anne Polter’s central motif of ‘enjoyed reading this but we’re going to pass,’ is muddled and evades the central issue of whether the work is good or not. Once again, we find her pussy-footing around prose.” I held all these damning critiques of reviews wondering if they’d be enjoyed as literary caricatures or despised as bitter volleys against individuals. I mean the idea came out of frustration (tepid frustration) but I was hoping that my “artistry” had turned the piece into something more. But I wasn’t sure. My hand wavered over the top of the mail-box until I finally put it to use. I sat down at an empty bus-stop bench a couple meters from the mail-box and started writing all this on the back of this envelope. An extra introduction to frame “Reviewing the Rejection Letters”. A last minute confession of fears. I’m neurotic but I think that’s one of my strengths. It keeps my pen moving and you’ll be hearing from me again and again no matter what. I think.

 

I’m a Chain Letter that Must be Stopped

     I woke up this morning and read in my inbox an off-kilter request to add to a list of 108 other stories on this blog. In the email I was told that if I didn’t write an introduction along with a story, 10 of my friends would “explode to death.” (Can exploding lead to anything else?) Well I’m not a superstitious person but I of course looked up the site and read through some of the stories which are for the most part ridiculous. Some of the stories are kind of funny but a lot have just been thrown together. Imagine a drunk Salman Rushdie writing an episode of the Family Guy. But what else can you expect from a random group of people? At least it wasn’t a novel written by the internet.

     While I’m not superstitious I do want to ensure the safety of my friends who happen to work in the explosives industry. (Go figure. I mean what would you do?) So here’s a story but I promise not to pass this chain letter to anyone else. It ends here.

    Unless you’d like to add a story.

 

The Little Love Gift

On a cold Wednesday night they met in a flurry of introductions - Amanda, Dawn, Lisa, Kevin – but with her black toque pulled low to her fierce blue eyes she stood out as unique. For her part, ever since he’d stepped in through the large glass door of the small cinema, a warning signal had been flashing at the back of her mind: “I’m never dating him.” One month later they walked out the door of a party together. Five blocks down the street, he stripped the tip of a cherry blossom branch of its petals. She leaned into his cupped hands. Six years later – at last – they were married, telling this story again and again with different parts deleted depending on the listener.

 

 

 

I’m Lee Henderson

   And yes I’m the one responsible for this daily shape shifting. Of course by now – after my 108th “confession” of who I really am, I suppose the vast majority of you are going to be skeptical beyond belief. If you read through “Broken Record Technique” you’ll see that the flash fictions on this site are a reflection –albeit pale and adumbrated - of my more polished narrative experiments but that is because I’ve only given myself fifteen minutes everyday to whip these up. This “behind-the-scenes” apology is an attempt to unearth some truth in order to establish some trust which leads me to the observation: isn’t it funny how we need some foothold into the facts before we can suspend our disbelief? 

   Enjoy today’s story and my new novel (plug – plug) will be coming out in August of this year. 

 

Water-Slide Boy

 

   Most of the residents of Surrey were almost happy to have a super-hero making their streets a little safer. On the night of May 11th, a gang of aspiring hoodlums broke in through the back door of a house on 80th street. They had been keeping tabs on the houses on that block for weeks, driving an ice-cream truck around and around and through friendly chit-chat they’d gleaned essential info for their B and E purposes. “We’re going to Disneyland on Friday. We’re going to Disneyland on Friday,” the children from 7287 shouted as they crammed ice-cream into their mouths as if to shut themselves up from the painful impatience of youth. And so on Sunday night the ice cream truck returned but this time it was black, shelled in large pest-control decals. The B and E was swift and thorough and soon the three criminals (Pete, Ted and Tom) were backing out of the driveway when they were stopped by a sudden thump. “What the..?” Ted, the driver – the most articulate of the three- shouted. He pushed his foot harder on the gas and they backed up into another thud that jerked their necks forward. A third time proved to be no more successful and so Ted drove forward. “Get out and see what that is,” he shouted at Tom and Pete who challenged him with blank stares. “See what it is !” he shouted a little louder and lurched towards them and yes he was the biggest of the three. Tom opened the sliding door and was halfway out when he was knocked over and unconscious by what appeared to be a waterslide that snaked around the front of the truck and then disappeared from view. It was followed only by a trail of high-pitched laughter. On the second trip around the water slide coiled even tighter to the truck and the next morning the police had the criminals all wrapped up like a gift. The clean up of the waterslide which lay like the cracked skin of a giant snake all the way up 80th Avenue took three days. Traffic was held up that Monday morning and call in radio programs were slammed. “We have streets in Surrey. That’s what we have. They need to be kept clear and safe. This Water-Slide boy is the real menace.”  And on and on and so it went but the Water-Slide Boy continued laughing and riding his waterslide through it all.

 

I’m Slavoj Žižek

   Yes and the past four months of daily fabulas have been an attempt at peeling back the ontological fabric of a solitary self.  In layman’s terms, I’ve claimed to be somebody different everyday for the past four months. I set about doing this in the hopes of unearthing some truth to our understanding of the thinking self with multiple diagonal ontological cuts across different discourses.

   I’ve now finished the experiment and I’m going surfing in Hawaii for the next month where I’m doing some endorsements for Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax.

  Here’s the last story I’ll ever write on this site…

 

Plugged Straight into the Soul

   Here’s a word of caution. I mean, don’t set your sights too high. It’s great to be ambitious and all but you know be realistic about it. If that makes any sense. What I’m trying to say is don’t be like me. I was stupid and I blew the biggest chance of my life.

   It was something like 18 days ago and I was surfing the web. I lit up a joint and I thought to myself: why can’t they make a giant bong computer, you know a glass bowl with the CPU and screen in a secure layer around the water? How hard would that be? It would make somebody millions and millions of dollars. A bongputer. A compubong. One or the other. So I was thinking about this and watching some weird Laurie Anderson videos from the 80’s. (Is that the blue man group as her back up band?  Jesus, the 80’s were weird.) So I was laughing at this weird video and thinking about literarally getting stoned online. (Come to think of it people might get tripped out by a computer-bong, they might think that they’re being tracked by forces online. Maybe it wouldn’t be a big seller. I mean sometimes the Fear hits and there’s no way around it.) But this story isn’t about getting stoned or ideas for new bongs.

   I’m just setting the stage.

   So there I was surfing the web and then I thought, what would happen if I google google. You know type “google” into the search bar. I took a big puff from my little J and typed in g-o-o-g-l-e. It was disappointing. There was something about google (Duhhh!) but then I thought, what if I type in “googling google” and then some news stories about google came up. I was disappointed and went to the kitchen to make myself a macaroni and cheese sandwich. (Being stoned is kind of like being pregnant. You know, those cravings. The only difference is you shouldn’t smoke weed when you’re pregnant.) I came back to the computer and typed “googling googling google”. Only two sites came up.

   So I did it one more time with one more google and that’s when I saw God or the heart of the internet or whatever you want to call it. It was fucking amazing. I felt like I was going down this water slide made out of a plasma screen t.v. and all the dopest rock videos were playing all around me. Then I suddenly hit pure entertainment. Like I was seeing everything that existed online all at the same time. An hour later I woke up on the floor and I got back into my seat and I did it again. 

   After a couple times I had to call my friends and tell them what happened and so they did it right away too and then word got out faster than you can say “crack” and then everyone around the world was tripping out to the web and there are all these theories about who started it and all these stoners and religious fanatics and real weirdos are coming out of the woodwork, claiming that they invented this or discovered this or know what it means but really I did it and now everyone’s over it. It’s last week’s news. 

  Because how much fun can you have by yourself anyway.

  Well here I am.

  Maybe I will try that bong-computer idea.

 

I’m the son of the love child of Borges and the leader singer of Os Mutantes

   Yes, it’s a mouthful of an introduction and so usually I just say hello my name is Denis Stepkin. How my grandparents got together in 1959 – before either of them had achieved fame in their respective fields of literature and rock and roll – is a long story and even longer is the tale of my mother ending up in Russia. Needless to say my work involves sprinkles of magic realism and psychedelia and everything that was best in my grandparents. The past four months of stories on this blog wherein I’ve created different authors and stories for each day is also a kind of Borgian experiment in truth, falsehoods and fiction.  In a nutshell: a meta-fictional, psychedelic freak-out.

   Enjoy…

 

 

The Curse of Laughter

 

 

    On May 12th of 1949, after the twins were delivered from a sixteen-hour labor, their father held them in his right and left arms and joked that they must have been locked in a struggle to make it out first. “They’ll be no favorites in these arms. No need to fight anymore boys,” he said but Misha and Sasha kicked their tiny legs at each other and the nurses had to separate them. Over the first decade of their lives the competition grew in leaps and bounds as the boys constantly tried to outdo one another: Misha with death-defying stunts (a tight-rope routine on a barbed-wire for example) and Sasha with his magic and comedy act which he snuck out into the night to perform at bars outside of St Petersburg. For their father’s thirtieth birthday, Sasha presented him with a birthday card containing 500 rubles of his secret earnings. Their father’s other gift was a fat tie with a smiling Stalin on the front that Misha had sewn himself. Sticking out from the dictator’s head were real hairs which Misha had plucked from Old Joe on a trip to the capital. With the family’s fortunes in decline, it was obvious which gift was the dearer and late that night Misha ran away from home with tears in his eyes to wander the Russian Steps where he met an obscure tribe of Cossacks who taught him real magic. Upon his return, ten years later, his brother laughed at his wild and savage appearance. In response: “This is the curse I will give to you. There will always be laughter springing from your lips. Through death and grief and whatever you may feel inside, your mouth will produce nothing but laughter.”  Sasha laughed even harder at the curse but later that night when he stubbed his toe on the edge of the bed, his body erupted in laughter. Fear spread through his heart as his body contorted in apparent mirth. Over the next couple of years, he lost friends and positions in entertainment clubs from his inappropriate laugher. (For audiences always want to enjoy a routine more than the performer. They’re the ones who are paying after all.) The terror of the curse hit home the hardest when their father died and Sasha attended the funeral at a distance so as not to interrupt the somber proceedings with peals of laughter. Sasha plotted his revenge and, learning that his brother had become an aspiring writer, he sought out a suitable curse: his brother would never come up with satisfying endings to stories. Never.

 

I’m Margaret Spenst

My son thinks he’s a writer but honestly - between you and me - I think he’s a little too hung up on the truth. When he’s telling a story he’ll actually stop in mid-sentence to try to remember some detail which slows everything down. Even I know that and I don’t like story-telling. I’m interested in the facts and getting things done. Most of the time. Over the past four months I have, however, been writing a story everyday on this site under various pseudonyms to show my son a thing or two about writing. Remember, Kevin, keep it snappy and interesting. Even your mother knows that. This Mother’s Day I’m turning the tables and I’m giving you something. Advice.

   And a story written from your point of view…

 

 

The Apple Didn’t Fall Far from the Bus Stop

 

   I got home from work around six to an almost empty mailbox - two pizza fliers which went straight into the perfectly positioned garbage can below - and then at my computer nothing but a rejection email from McSweeney’s. (”sharp, but we’re going to pass” - Can I still use that in a bio? “McSweeney’s has called my work sharp,” and I’ll leave it at that.)  

   The phone rang. It was my mom.

   “Is this the right phone to be calling you on?”

   “Yes.”

    ”And if you’re not in I can leave a message?”

    ”Yes.” 

    “So yesterday I put up a bus-stop.”

   “What?”

   “Well after two weeks of calling everyday to complain that they hadn’t put up the new stop sign after they reversed the route, I was really getting fed up. Those planners get the big bucks but they forgot to move one of the stop signs. You know everywhere else on the other side of the street there are new stop signs but not in front of our place. So everyone here has to walk if they want to take the bus. White Rock is making 50 seniors walk to get anywhere. It’s ridiculous and I’m wasting the rest of my life on the phone trying to call somebody to do something about it. So Sunday morning I went out with your old tree-planting shovel and I dug up the old stop sign which was never firmly in place, it was kind of wobbly and then I took it across the street and dug a new hole for it. That shovel works good.” 

    ”So you took matters into your own hands?”

    ”I took matters into my own hands.”

    ”Good for you.”

     “I haven’t tried it yet but I think it should work.”

     I didn’t tell my mom about the Vancouver bus driver I had after work who raced me home in fits and starts. The brakes screeched countless times for bus stops and red lights and then he would gun it. I wanted to lean over to the guy across from me and deadpan: “The only reasonable explanation for his driving is that he’s used to having his own personal bus on the autobahn in Germany where he never has to stop. He just keeps forgetting that he’s in Canada, working as a bus driver. But the important thing is he loves his job.” I would have said that to the young guy across from me in a jacket very similar to my own but his ipod buds were stuffed deep in his ears. 

     In some ways I take after my mom. I’m not afraid to bring my unique ideas into existence in the world.

    We’re both age-old eccentrics.

     Happy Mother’s Day.

 

 

 

I was telling the truth 2 days ago

   I’m a pencil-pushing scribe. Here’s a modified part of a chapter from my book: 3, 321, 453 short-cuts to Becoming a Successfull Writer.

 

 

    Short-Cut Number Fifty Five:  The Dreaded Writer’s Block  

 

    Sometimes you sit down with the best of intentions to write but nothing flows from your imagination. First off, don’t panick, it happens to everyone. Even Shakespeare experienced writer’s block. Some scholars understand Hamlet’s struggle to take action to be an embodiment of Shakespeare’s inability to come up with a character flaw for the titular character: to write or not to write that was his question. The brilliance of Shakespeare was that he turned writer’s block into a memorable play. Certainly, there are other scholars who suggest that Shakespeare was simply the pen name of a semi-literate bar wench named Lucy who wrote her plays based on the affairs that she had with well heeled men over sixty but I would suggest that even she must have struggled with writer’s block. Some scholars of the Torah suggest that the 7th day of creation, God’s day off, was really a case of  writer’s block, creater’s block.  Or in the word’s of a Canadian rocker from the 80’s, Kim Mitchell, “Might as well go for a soda.”

     Here’s my trick to overcoming writer’s block:

     Okay close your eyes and imagine you’re in a dark room. (This will be easy since closing your eyes creates a sense of darkness.  Imagining you’re in a dark room with your eyes open is very challenging.  Actually keep your eyes open but imagine you’re in a dark room.  This will be a more effective test of your imagination.  If you want you can imagine you’re closing your eyes to find your way into that dark room but I’d prefer you didn’t rely on that kind of mental crutch.  Just remember your eyes are actually open but you’re imagining that you are in a dark room.  You can’t see anything. (Even these words. (Let’s just say you’re remembering them so clearly it’s like you’re visualizing them in your mind’s eye.)))

      Now reach your hand out and feel around for a doorknob.  So you’re feeling around for this doorknob which has the warmth of a human hand.  When you find the knob you feel like you’re shaking somebodies hand.  It’s inviting.  It’s warm.  It’s just a doorknob though and this isn’t a creepy doorknob like in a horror movie where all parts of the house are made out of human body parts.  Okay don’t be scared, don’t be scared.  Its okay.  I’m here.

    This is writing.  You’re a writer.  You are overcoming writer’s block.  Just remind yourself of that.  That is your mantra.  This is my mantra.  My mantra is this.  My mantra is this.  When I first tried to find my own mantra I found the word itself so strange and foreign at first that I was just repeating the word mantra to remember it.  Mantra became my mantra.  So my mantra became, this is my mantra.  It’s very simple and self contained.  For me it means being able to remember something even though its strange and foreign sounding.

    So back to our cure for the dreaded writer’s block.  You are holding the doorknob that’s shaped like a hand and then you turn it like you would turn someone’s wrist in a self-defense move.  You are not angry but that’s just what its like and you open the door and what do you suddenly see but a mirrored reflection of yourself. 

    Quick sit down and write the first think that comes into your head about the last time you saw yourself in a mirror.  Were you wearing a hat ?  Was an animal wearing a Richard Nixon mask perched somewhere on the hat ?  What kind of animal was it ?  (Notice I’m letting my imagination take me away from my real memories.  I’m using my real memories as springboards into an imaginative realm where anything is possible. Including… a break through of that nasty old writer’s block.)

     Begin within yourself and then move out from yourself.  This is my mantra.  This is my mantra.  This is my mantra.

     Next week we’ll explore ways of searching deep within yourself to find that perfect literary agent just for you.

 

i’m sheila heti

    If you’re like me, you’re floored by the number of times that people get taken in by fake memoirs, autobiographies and other grocery lists of the soul. How many more times do we need to be told, “Don’t believe everything that you read”? And what does the veracity of a memoir, a “this-really-happened” feeling, add to our reading experience anyway?  Can’t we just leave things at amusing, memorable or thought-provoking?  For the past four months I’ve been writing everyday under completely different names; a series of traps towards credulity. 

   Here’s my story for today.

 

The Marriage Contraption

 

“What a thing to behold,” the husband kept telling his wife, morning, noon and night. One morning she asked him to get up from the couch and leave. “Would you kindly leave,” she implored. He gestured towards the marriage contraption which he’d built to woo her senseless. “I’ve come to my senses,” she flat out stated, “You’re nothing but smoke and mirrors and you don’t lift a finger around here. You don’t even have a job.” He claimed that he needed to maintain the marriage contraption. She opened the door and pointed something at him. Three months later, she passed him on the street where he sat on the sidewalk with his hand pillowing his face. He had an upturned hat in front of the marriage contraption. She threw several quarters into the hat where they clinked into other change. He looked up and smiled, an act that lifted all the features of his face, a ploy that won her heart once upon a time. His fingertips reached out for the marriage contraption. She reached into her purse and pulled out the divorce device and continued walking.

 

I’m just here to help

   I’m an aspiring young writer named Ezekiel Irons with a book coming out shortly on how to write more effectively. Here’s the preface to “3,321,453 Short-Cuts to Becoming a Successful Writer”.

 

     FOREWARD: 3, 321, 453 short-cuts to becoming a successfull writer.

 

     Why 3, 321, 453 short-cuts to becoming a successful writer ? Because that is my telephone number and this self-published book and self-recorded tape which you may be listening to have both been self-financed and I am a very busy, busy writer but if you need me to write something for you, a film review, a written account of your child’s birthday party or just a simple short story, I will try to find time for you. So just call me. My number is on the front of this book in your hands. Or just call to say hello and chat. Now before you get the wrong idea I’m not being sneaky for sneaky’s sake. I also have a lot of short-cuts to becoming a successful writer. In this collection I do not actually have 3, 321, 453 short-cuts but I do have a lot and 3, 321, 453 is a lot so in a sense its the same thing. 3, 321, 453 is short hand for a lot. Or to put it another way 3, 321, 453 is a short-cut to reaching me. And we end where we started like so many powerful works of literature.

 

For Ten Years I’ve been Writing for Lonely Planet while behind Prison Bars

    Lonely Planet has been rocked by scandal recently with the warts and all memoir of a former travel writer. In Do Travel Writer’s Go to Hell? Thomas Kohnstamm reveals that he never even visited Colombia. “The amount they gave me wasn’t even enough for the flight.” Elsewhere in the memoir, he explains that he sold drugs to finance a trip. 

   So what.

   I’ve been working for Lonely Planet for fifteen years. In 1998, on my way home from a 4-week stint in Central America, I was caught at the Mexican border with 3 kilos of cocaine behind my beard – I was dressed as Santa. Since then I’ve been incarcerated in California. I’ve also managed to continue writing for Lonely Planet, contributing to books on America, England, China and countries in South America. 

   How do I do it?

   I have internet access and I’ve managed to befriend a lot of inmates by writing up prime spots for their relatives’ restaurants, bars or taxi services.  I’ve also entertained everyone on the inside with this blog where I’ve claimed to be somebody different everyday. The guys get a kick out of it.

   I get out this afternoon, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to reveal the truth.

   I’m also launching my own book, Do Travel Writer’s Go to Jail?

 

 

 

Always Something There to Remind Me

 

 

   He opens his eyes to a white ceiling and then slams them shut under the rush of white pain. His head feels like it’s been stuffed with his stomach; an unfamiliar nausea coats his thoughts. He opens his mouth but no words come out. A voice next to him fills the room:

   “Hello, I wish to lodge a complaint regarding your Quickwhip Blender. Yes. Now, who am I speaking to? How do you spell that?”

    He tries to turn his head but pain stops him short. He lifts his arms up to his head but his reach is blocked by some kind of metal contraption, a metal frame boxing in his head. He tries to remember.

   “Yes, well Ezekiel, I purchased your product three weeks ago. I had high hopes at the time and didn’t expect to be speaking to somebody in a complaints department in the hospital. That part wasn’t mentioned in the infomercial. Do you know what I’m saying Ezekiel? Yes, in the hospital, all thanks to your fine product.”

    He wants to laugh at the story unfolding next to him but he senses it’ll just cause him more pain. He once again tries to open his eyes to orient himself to the world. White slowly grows visible until the ceiling comes into full view but it’s just like his memory: blank.

   “Well, I took the QuickWhip Blender out of the box, read the instructions fully. I spent a good ten minutes on them. I had a tea while I read them. That’s about ten minutes. I plugged it in and then it just took off. It was like a wild bird. A rabid bird. I was on the floor and it was all over me. There was nothing in the instructions that said, stand ten feet back from the QuickWhip when you plug it in.”

     He tries to remember anything but keeps coming up against blanks: name, age, occupation. He knows he’s American but that thought does little to comfort him. He’s a man. Of course he knows that too. 

    “Well then my son came into the room with a baseball bat to get it off me. Can you believe that? A baseball bat!! He’s not a violent boy. And then it was on him. You shouldn’t program these things to attack their owners. Good owners. Well my boy has his share of problems. 34 and still living at home.”

     Does her voice sound familiar? He briefly wonders if he’s the boy who she’s referring to. He waits for more clues, while she outlines the basic problems she has with her boy: posture, diet, erratic volume of voice, etc.  He prays to a God – who he may or may not believe in – that his life was something a little more glamorous. 

   Before falling into this empty blank.

   He waits.