Week 20, "Boondoggle"

A SUCCESSFUL STORY

“A successful [story] is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it.” Mark Twain.

Brad’s imagination was on fire and he couldn’t wait to get home to resume writing. He had just come from the Boondoggle Festival, a counterculture celebration outside the little town of Boondocks. Brad had spent four days listening to great music, meeting new people, even buying crafts he couldn’t afford, like the new pen made out of polished redwood with the hand-made notebook.

“I’m a writer,” he had thought to himself, “so it’s a business expense.”

He had also hoped it would inspire his writing.

“Nothing’s worse than staring at that damn cursor,” he had thought. “It’s eating my soul!”

He had changed the cursor to a little red blinking dinosaur before leaving, but it hadn’t helped. Now, after a much-needed break, he was ready.

But first he needed pie. Tilly’s Diner was located at the edge of Boondocks, and its sign boasted the best blackberry pie ever.

“Sounds good to me,” he thought, “especially with some melty vanilla ice cream on the side. I can’t drive on an empty stomach.”

Tilly was an attractive young woman who liked to talk almost as much as she liked to bake pies. Three slices of pie and two cups of coffee later, Brad was ready to hit the road, energized when she gave him her telephone number.

“I didn’t waste my time,” he thought. “I can use her as a character in my book, and who knows?”

His writing instructor had told him he needed realistic characters, and Tilly had certainly been real.

“Three more hours and I’ll be home,” Brad thought. He’d never been this eager to write.

Five hours and three stops later, including a short detour to see the Rainbow Falls, a well-fed Brad was finally home.

“Steve’s Burgers had definitely been worth the stop,” he thought. “That Steve’s quite a character – maybe I’ll put him in my book too.”

Without unpacking, he turned on his computer and brought up his story. It had no title. In fact, it had no words at all. After staring at the blinking dinosaur for a while, he started to feel groggy from his driving.

“I need a nap,” he thought. “I can never write when I’m tired.”

As he dozed off, Brad thought about his book. It was going to be about the loss of imagination in the world. Everything would be in shades of gray, or maybe black and white, or something else. The imaginary part would be in color, like the difference between Kansas and Oz, except without Judy Garland and the singing.

“Maybe I’ll use Tilly,” he thought. “She’s real. Or maybe it’ll be Steve as Sam Spade killing the Brothers Grimm with poisoned hamburgers, only no one cares. It’ll be a hard-boiled, dark world, without any fairy stories.”

At that point, Brad fortunately fell asleep.

The next morning, after some breakfast and a run through the park, he faced his computer again.

“Damn that dinosaur,” he thought. “What I really need is a new cursor.”

Half an hour later, he still had the same cursor, but he’d found a different screensaver, one with photographs of famous authors and inspirational quotes.

“I need to check my email before I can really concentrate,” he thought.

The first one was from his publisher, demanding a full refund of his advance unless he produced an acceptable first draft in thirty days. He stopped reading emails and got back to work.

The screen was blank and remained so for the next hour, taunting Brad.

“Maybe I can write a Dadaist novel,” he thought. “If anything can be art, then nothing can be art. Maybe I can convince my editor that blank pages are a novel.”

This lifted Brad’s spirits for at least an hour as he considered the possibility of succeeding with this.

“I need inspiration,” he thought, “a real muse. Maybe Tilly could be my muse.”

He decided against calling her to see. Talking with women on the phone wasn’t really his strong suit.

“Should I drive back?” he thought. “No, too soon.”

Some very un-muselike images of Tilly flashed through his brain.

“Maybe I can write a romance novel with some soft-core porn,” he thought, smiling. “I’ll need to go back to Boondocks for research.”

But Tilly’s Diner was hours away, so Brad settled on scrolling through a few adult sites on his computer.

“It’s not porn,” he thought. “It’s research.”

After a lengthy research session, at last he was ready to start.

“Every book needs a good beginning,” he thought.

His fingers flew across the keyboard: “Once upon a time in a land far, far away there lived a beautiful young pie maker and her true love, a talented writer.”

Brad admired his work. The dam had finally broken.

“I’m on my way at last,” he thought.

He thought some more. Nothing came. He deleted the sentence; he was very familiar with the delete key, but it always felt like failure.

“Most books have bar scenes,” he thought. “Time for some more inspiration.”

Brad wanted his book to be gritty and realistic, something that would shine a bright light on the dark corners of human existence, so he needed a run-down bar that reeked of failure and despair. Fortunately, Ernie’s Interlude was just around the corner, in a little beat-up strip mall between a laundromat and a massage parlor. Ernie’s once had a neon sign with a cocktail glass that flashed back and forth. Like the bar’s customers, the sign had seen better days and now sputtered to life infrequently.

Ernie’s regulars tilted toward the geriatric. Since it was early in the month, the bar was busy with people silently drinking their Social Security checks away, lost in memories of better times.

Brad sat at a corner table, ordered a cheap scotch, brought out his notebook, and looked around the room, ready to write bleak sketches to use in his book. Five or six drinks later, the notebook was still empty and so was his wallet, so he walked unsteadily home and went to bed.

Not even Ernie’s Interlude could inspire Brad, and he was running out of time.

In the next three weeks, he cleaned his apartment twice, washed his car four times, and went running every day. He almost called Tilly six times. The screen was still empty and the dinosaur was still blinking.

“At least Dino’s doing something right,” thought Brad.

One night, Brad went for a walk on the mean streets of his neighborhood, trying in vain to find the pulse of the big city.

All he could think about was blackberry pie.

“I’m done,” he thought. “There’s nothing in me. At least I didn’t write anything bad.”

The next morning, Brad returned what was left of his advance along with a promise to repay the rest. Then he headed back to Boondocks and Tilly’s Diner.

When he got there, the parking lot was empty, and after he walked to the door, he found out why. A sign read “Closed until further notice due to COVID-19.”

“#@&!,” thought Brad, and returned to his car.

He called Tilly from the parking lot and got a recorded message: “I’m closed until this virus thing is licked. Stay healthy.”

Brad had no other number; he closed his eyes, leaned back in his seat, and tried to decide what to do next.

“No pie, no Tilly, no book,” was all he could think. “It’s over.”

Giving up felt easier than it should have. He had no money, so he’d have to move out of his apartment until he could find work.

“Maybe as Tilly’s dishwasher when she opens up?” he thought.

But he knew what he had to do, and it made him wince. He would have to go back home and drown in the “we-told-you-so’s” from his parents.

Brad started the car’s engine and headed home.

“There’s a book in me somewhere,” he thought, “just not now.”

If failure was the prelude to success, he knew it would be a best seller, and he smiled.