December 3rd

There once lived a little old man. That’s how these things always start, “there once lived…” That’s why those Ludmilla Petrushevskaya collections all have those titles.

“STOP! You’re doing it again!”

What?

“Last night, around 1:30 AM, you told yourself - as you gave up on even starting a story are churning out a few paragraphs of shit about some alt right guy that you weren’t very confident was, in anyway, accurate and was probably going to be hard to create a story for and, as you went out of your way to say all the ways he had not been radicalized, was probably going to fail to be sufficiently critical of bigotry - that you needed to not do this cute narrator shit. You were going to practice writing as a non-partisan narrator.”

No, that’s not what I said. I said I wasn’t going to take on the views of the character I was writing about. I barely started. How do you know if this little old man knows about the Petrushevskaya English translations?

“That’s what you meant, though, you were going to be a normal narrator. Now, on the second sentence, you start commenting on the story.”

Who the hell are you? Why are you interrupting my story?

“I am you from last night. Or I am you in the present, that’s the only way I can communicate with you currently is if I am also in the present. But I am the part of you that is calling you out on your bullshit.”

But by doing this and interrupting the story, you have gone and made these even more non-normal narrator by essentially creating two narrators - and last night, you (or me) said to cut out the part of the writing where I just waste time and to start writing an actual story right away and your interruption has completely stopped that from happening. I was literally three sentences in and I could have written a great story that had action right from the get go and I would have been a ‘normal’ narrator.

“You were three sentences in and it was clear you were going to do weird narrator opinions and such and ruin the story and, more importantly, you were going to avoid the intention of those instructions from last night which was not so much about writing something decent, but about changing things up because a pattern was forming and these whole ordeal is about getting you some practice so you can be not ashamed of what you are currently writing like you used to be for a bit.”

Man, I don’t need this shit. I was just thinking about how it was Thursday night and tomorrow was Friday - the weekend - and I could finally relax and then I realized that I have to fucking work this entire month because I decided to commit to writing something for every single fucking day for an entire month. And that’s not he attitude to have so soon into this. Especially after how little I managed to bother yesterday, the second day. But I sucked it up and say I should follow through on this commitment and maybe, just maybe, I will get somewhere in life if I start making an effort and don’t be so lazy. And I took the advice from you (or me) from yesterday and didn’t wait until Midnight to start trying to write something. I started at like 10:30 or something. Maybe 10:45. I opened the webpage and then I might have checked Twitter again. And then I start writing my god damn story and you immediately interrupt me and criticize me.

:”Carry on then, but if you actually believe that this level of commitment is sufficient to get anywhere in life, you need your head examined. You are successfully, so far, committing to writing every day, but you are failing to commit to writing rules that you laid out for yourself less than 24 hours ago.”

Shut the fuck up! I’m getting back to my story. No more interruptions from you. If I’m too quirky in the narration so be it, if that’s what it takes to put out words, there are worse things in life. That’s what editing is for. I am-

“Editing? You aren’t editing this shit. You know that! Don’t lie to me (or yourself.)”

Well, that may be true. I am definitely only committing to writing, not editing. But the point is I am getting into the practice of writing everyday. Once I have that done and I am able to manage to put words out, then I can fix whatever I write later - even if I am not going to fix this later. I remember the times that I wouldn’t write for weeks or maybe even months and I would tell myself when I got a spurt of creativity at 11 AM at work that today I was definitely going to write something when I got home and then almost 12 hours later I would be home and had dinner and maybe goofed off for a while and I forced myself to sit down and write and my mind would go completely blank. I had finally gotten myself to open a Word Document or webpage or whatever and I could not think of anything to write because all I wanted to write was just complaining and I knew that was not ‘writing’ - that, at best, was journaling and that was not what I was intending to do. So this writing, however imperfect, is at least ‘creating’ however loosely that term may be being used by myself.

Anyway, leave me alone and let me write my story. Maybe it will turn out good or maybe it will turn out bad. (Have I managed to write all this because I drank a thermos of caffeinated tea that I took home from work at 10? I often drink one when I get home around 7 or maybe 8 and I don’t usually have this level of energy as a result. It is also possible i am managing to write this much because while it is technically two characters arguing, it is pretty much just me journaling - writing large chunks describing what I did last night while writing or how I am now writing sentences about how I drank some tea about an hour ago. Still, words are words. I hope this comes across like Mario Levrero and not self-indulgent although I bet many people would think that Empty Words was self-indulgent so who is the accurate judge? I wish I could write stuff like Halle Butler.)

As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted… (One last intruding thought - and it should be noted this is not the ‘second narrator’ whose words are found in double quotation marks [I hope that is the way to describe those type of quotation marks,] but rather ‘thoughts’ of the main narrator that are not part of the story he is telling - all of these words, whether they are good or not, certainly must make up for cutting things short last night.)

There once was a little old man. (Is that right? Is that what I said before? It was so long ago and it’s so far up on the page. I hope that’s what I said otherwise this is a continuity error and nerds love pointing that stuff out. But I think they mostly point that stuff out in movies, not books. It’s weird that nerds watch movies and don’t read books.) This little old man was a murderer. But that doesn’t mean he was a bad person. You don’t know who he murdered or why he murdered. And those are important factors to take into account before judging someone.

“Alright. Character development is important. Readers need a reason to care about the person they are reading about - hell, you need a reason to care about the person you’re writing about! With that said, your goal, currently, after writing these extremely long introductory sections the last few days - I am including things you were writing, but didn’t finish the day before you started this ‘December’ thing - is to write a story with things happening… so cut out the description of this old man. Put whatever matters in as the story moves along!”

Shut up! Leave me alone!

“Just do it!”

Who are you Phil Knight?

“No, that guy owns sweat shops.”

Yeah, I know. Fuck Nike. Nike and Intel spend massive amounts of money in our local elections and ruin everything.

“I agree, but please start the action.”

Fine. So this little old murderer went to the beach because he needed a vacation. Murdering is hard work.

“Story!”

Jesus Christ! Give me a little leeway. I just wrote one single sentence that wasn’t moving things forward. This thing can’t be completely cold. ‘The old man went to the beach. The old man saw a crab. The crab pinched him. The old man pinched the crab back to death. Crabs are super serious about murder - more so than humans - so they all got together and tracked the old man back to his home and pinched him to death.’ See how boring that was to read?

“Yeah. I see your point.”

So let me just tell my story.

“Okay, but…”

But what?!

“You’re not going to…”

What?!

“It’s just… you aren’t going to now write the story you just explained right then. Like you aren’t going to flesh that out into a big long story about crabs tracking down an old man and murdering him in his home because he killed a crab on vacation… are you?”

Well, I was starting to think about it.

“Goddamnit.”

It’s just, I came up with that on the spot and that’s the nature of these writing exercises or whatever you want to call them. I write without anything planned and see where the story goes and that’s what I did there. I just thought for a split second, ‘okay, he murdered the crab, then what?’

“Yeah, but everyone knows how it goes now because you just spoiled your own story you didn’t even write yet.”

Yeah, I’m kind of sick of writing again. I think this is the longest I wrote so far. 45 solid minutes? I don’t know. I might have wrote longer on the first one. I think the first night and second night, I would get a little bored and reward myself for writing a little bit and go look at other parts of the internet. This was mostly focused so it seems like a lot - plus the line breaks.

“But you wrote even less of a story than yesterday.”

Yeah, but I also wrote the entire story right there. Beginning, middle, end. Vacation. Crab-murder. Murdered by crabs.

“God, I know you think this is cute, but there’s no way everyone else doesn’t think you’re annoying as fuck.”

Well, I wrote something for tonight.

“Well, seriously, follow through - accurately - on some of those nights from last night tomorrow.”

Okay, but don’t interrupt me.

“Fine.”

You know what the weird thing is?

“What?”

I think, maybe ‘cause the tea or maybe because I started writing before midnight - and it’s still not even quite midnight - that I still have the energy and focus to write a little more.

“Then do it. More practice is better.”

Yeah, but when I wrote out the whole story, I did some quick math in my brain and kind of thought how fucking long it was going to take to get all the way through that.

“…”

And also I kind of struggle to write when I know what’s going to happen because it’s not interesting, I just want to get to the end and it seems like it’s taking forever. Finding out as I write is a lot more fun. But you know this because you are me.