Day 360: What To Write Instead

Here's the trick: In order to write a good story, you have to create at least one character with whom the reader can identify. That character must want something very dramatic—to survive, to find love, to get from desperate point A to point sweet B. For each dramatic want there must be an equally dramatic opposing want from the baddy, the meanie, the villain. They spar and clash throughout the story until one of them wins. Everything in the story must lead to that particular and inevitable resolution, which is decided by the actions of the characters. I know all this from reading a book by Jerry Cleaver titled Immediate Fiction. I recommend the book. I also recommend that I start life all over again, maybe as a writer.

It's all so easy, it's hard.

So, for now, I'll write this prosaic poem instead:

Each morning

for 20 years now

the man shuffles

to the end of his driveway

looks to his left, looks to his right,

picks up his newspaper,

turns around, shuffles back

into the house, and closes the door

for the rest of the day.

This morning there was no paper,

just the man

hands resting on hips,

slight forward thrust

of narrow shoulders,

tiny puckering of his brush-stroke mouth,

occasional blinking of his ink-dot eyes,

constant cascading of his long face

into the blue soles of his cloth slippers.

Because there was no newspaper

he had not read the headline

concerning the red-haired paperboy,

the one he called Sonny,

the one he always forgot to tip,

who had been killed by a car

just yesterday

after tossing the morning news

from his bike

and turning to watch it land

at the foot of

the man's driveway.

With nothing there for the man

to pick up,

he waits all day

in the hot sun,

causing him to puff up

like soufflé or popovers,

causing him to implode

at last

in the aftermath

of one boy's tragic
and untimely death.