So, someone accused me of writing a death note (I presume she meant a death threat, because the connotations of a ‘death note’ play out very differently in my mind)… Which, if a good friend of mine (and former flatmate) is correct in his assessment, is a drastic misinterpretation of a doodle committed whilst stuck on hold.
     Like most people, I’ve spent my time in the trenches of telephonic warfare, awaiting the signal from HQ to go over the top and actually speak to a salesperson or related ‘qualified’ tradesperson. Some people doodle when they are stuck in the intermidable wait that is the labyrinth of modern phone policy; I tend to write down pieces of dialogue or character ideas that wander through the muzak. I sometimes wonder whether I should go full time into the ringing of large corporations and multi-nationals; the horrible suspicion is that my idea hit rate might sky rocket (whilst my bank account will fall ever lower as I buy lawn furniture and a collection of ‘Massacred Gnomes’).
     I’ve been pondering for several years now a rather large issue in re my writing, which is that what I would really like to write about are all-powerful entities who can do almost anything they please, and make such a written testament a) worth reading and b) a character study. The problem I have is that all-powerful characters who can almost anything are rather boring to read (I feel, at least) as they, well, don’t face many issues other than which almighty superpower to use this time around. Thus I’ve worked out lots of dialogue and pieces of angsty thoughts for such characters (all powerful characters often become goths, if only for a dirty weekend in Soho; I actually want to avoid that (the goths, not the dirty weekend, which is another matter best not mentioned to the parents)) but not much in the way of a plot. The Servant stories have been my closest attempt to work this through, and it’s been a bit of a step forward and a loll backwards in achieving what I want. I’m especially interested in having all powerful characters kill other characters and make it interesting. Not by way of how they die but rather why, and for what expressed reason.
     Thus, if friend and (former-)flatmate is right then a few words that struck me (and they probably weren’t very good ones) whilst listening to yet another bad cover of ‘The Carpenters’, written down so as to become meaningless in a few days time when the context escapes me, have been taken as a threat of death… Which has a lot of virtue, I am sure, although it strikes me as almost entirely post-modern, seeing that the reader(s) read in a lot of information which I am sure wasn’t there in the first instance.
     It’d all be a lot funnier if I hadn’t also been told that I apparently barely escaped criminal charges for writing it…
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For those of you wondering how the submission is going, then I can say that I know as much as you do. One rejection (almost six months late) for a zombie story I wrote a long while back; not entirely sure where I will send this one next. It is the Year of the Zombie (revised Chinese Chronology) and thus such stories will have a brief surge of popularity before the five or so ideas are wrung out (Still, wouldn’t mind turning the story into a novel one day). Otherwise, I await replies and work on my other major writing project, the thesis. Very little new fiction is being produced (on paper, at least). If only that ‘Spore’ story would sell…