"Well look who’s back," said a young man with a shaggy head of curly hair as he dropped into the booth. "I guess this means you’re finally done."
The person already in the booth, another young man with shorter hair and a calmer expression, looked up from the papers in front of him and made a wry face.
“More or less,” he said, making a sheepish face. “At least I’ve stopped working on it.”
“Did you finish?” the first man asked with interest. His name was Dan, and he was a writer, if you can be a writer and be not yet published. He was never eager to impress; he generally dressed as if he’d just tumbled out of the clothes dryer. “You did it, didn’t you? You can tell me, I won’t hold it against you if you did.”
His companion, whose name was Ben, didn’t talk so much. He’d had been published just once, years before, and that had been a short fiction contest at school. Ben was still diligent in the pursuit of his craft, though he was less eager to be successful than his friend. He was thirty-one, and never seemed hurried.
“I managed the minimum number of words,” he said, taking a sip of his beer.
“The minimum number,” said Dan. “I’ll bet you crushed it. Come on, what was the total?”
Ben hesitated and scratched the back of his head. “I don’t think it’s important,” he said.
“Come on,” said Dan. “How much did you get done? No judgment. This is a safe place.”
Ben hesitated, then named a number.
“Overachiever,” said Dan, scoffing.
Ben chuckled. “Here’s to that,” he said, raising his glass in a mock toast.
To his surprise, Dan lifted his own and toasted, apparently in earnest. “Here’s to dissatisfaction,” he said, after he’d finished his beer in one long swallow.
Ben took Dan’s empty glass and his own to the bar, came back with two fresh ones.
“Dissatisfaction?” he said, sitting down.
“Of course,” Dan said.
“How so?” asked Ben.
“You’re dissatisfied,” Dan said, pointing while holding his glass, “that even though you wrote more words than me, or any person, for that matter, with a healthy social life could...”
“No judgment,” Ben said.
“...Even so,” said Dan, “you’re dissatisfied that you didn’t do more. You wanted to finish your story.”
Ben shrugged. “It seems like a waste of time otherwise,” said Ben.
“Well,” said Dan, “you should learn to write better.”
“Thanks for the advice,” said Ben, nodding with a severe look.
“I’m serious,” said Dan. “A good writer can finish his story with the minimum number of words. More words is usually just more noise; clean style is the best style, you know it.”
“And how many words did you manage this month?” Ben asked testily.
Without pause, Dan named a number. Ben stared.
“You finished?” he said.
Dan seemed a little taken aback at Ben’s question.
“Not really,” he said.
“That’s over the minimum needed,” said
“Just barely,” said Dan.
“I thought you hated the whole idea of the project,” Ben said.
“I do,” said Dan.
“You said it was for amateurs,” said Ben, “and people, wait, let me make sure I’m quoting this right. I think it was, ‘people who don’t have what it takes during the other eleven months of the year.’”
“I said that,” said Dan.
“And then you did it,” said Ben.
Dan nodded.
“You washed out in the first five days last year,” said Ben.
Dan shrugged. “Why do you think I said all those ugly things?”
Ben chuckled again.
“Well,” he said. “Now I really do feel like an overachiever. And I had no idea you were even doing it.”
“How could you have?” said Dan. “You barely came out of your apartment between when the thing started and now.”
“What, you miss me?” Ben asked with sarcastic playfulness.
“No,” said Dan. “I barely went out of mine.”
“Fair enough,” said Ben. “Well, good for you.”
“Thanks,” said Dan. “So it bothers you that you didn’t finish the story?”
“Sure,” said Ben, considering. “Sure it does. I wish I had the whole thing wrapped up neatly. I could move on to something else.”
“Sick of the project already?” said Dan.
Ben shrugged, finished his beer. “Sick of stalling,” he said.
“That again,” said Dan.
“Always,” said Ben. “Only thing harder than getting started in the first place is keeping going when you don’t want to. And there’s a hundred ways to not keep going.”
“And for you,” said Dan, who had heard this explanation before, “the worst is when I can’t commit to anything, and the word count goes up while the story stands still.”
Ben shrugged.
“It’s a problem,” he said. “I wish I knew how to fix it.”
“I told you before,” said Dan. “Make something awful happen, and make the characters deal with it.”
“I try that,” said Ben.
“And?” said Dan.
“They get over it,” said Ben. “It didn’t really bother them.”
Dan stared.
“I’m not sure,” he said slowly, “that you’re neurotic enough to be a writer.”
“You’ve probably got a point,” said Ben.
“You just need to keep in mind what the problem is,” said Dan.
“The problem,” said Ben.
“Otherwise known as the plot,” said Dan. “The second biggest part of the story is the problem the characters have to deal with in order for the story to be over. Writers just call the problem a “plot” in order to make writing sound tougher than it is.”
“I’m not sure that’s completely accurate,” said Ben.
“Well,” said Dan, “if you’re stalling and the story’s going nowhere, you just need to know why you’re telling the story in the first place: the characters are in trouble and they need to get out of it.”
“Why were you dissatisfied?” Ben asked, changing the subject.
“I’m not dissatisfied,” said Dan evenly.
“You just toasted dissatisfaction,” said Ben.
“So?” said Dan.
“You never toast anything that doesn’t have to do with you,” said Ben.
“How do you know that?” said Dan.
Ben shrugged. “You never talk about anything that doesn’t have to do with you.”
Dan considered.
“So I’m dissatisfied,” said Dan.
“Why?” said Ben.
“You won’t like to hear this,” said Dan.
“If I don’t like it,” said Ben, “I’ll just blame myself for asking.”
“Well,” said Dan, “I didn’t just finish the project, I mean write the minimum number of words.”
Ben motioned as if to say go on.
Dan rose and went to the bar, came back with two more beers.
“I finished my story,” said Dan.
Ben used profanity to express his doubt and dismissal.
“I’m just as surprised as you are,” said Dan.
“‘A good writer uses fewer words,’” said Ben scornfully.
“Oh,” said Dan. “I didn’t mean me.”
“Right,” said Ben.
“Whatever,” said Dan, “that’s besides the point.”
“So the point is,” said Ben, “that you took on a project you normally would be too good to even start,”
“Check,” said Dan.
“Finished the project on time,” said Ben, “in spite of all probability to the contrary,”
“Super unlikely,” said Dan.
“And managed to wrap up your story,” said Ben, “all at the same time.”
“I’m as surprised as you are,” Dan said again.
“And you’re dissatisfied,” said Ben.
Dan nodded.
Ben made a motion with his hands as if to say what am I going to do with this guy.
“What made you even start?” he asked.
“Wanted to see if I could do it,” said Dan. “Or at least make it longer than five days this time.”
“How’d you finish?” said Ben.
“No internet,” said Dan.
“None?” said Ben.
“Nothing but email,” said Dan.
“Research?” asked Ben.
“Books,” said Dan. “Encyclopedias and journals.”
“Get out of town,” said Ben.
“It’s all in there,” said Dan. “It was actually stimulating to look things up there, I would spot other things on the way to what I wanted, get new ideas.”
“The More You Know,” Ben said, arcing his open hand in a slow wave.
Dan made a hand gesture. “Don’t knock it,” he said.
“And yet you’re dissatisfied,” said Ben, returning to business.
“I think that’s what it is,” said Dan thoughtfully.
“What’s bugging you?” said Ben. “Congrats by the way.”
“Thanks,” said Dan, grinning brightly.
“Over-acheiver,” said Ben.
“Thanks,” said Dan, still grinning.
“What’s bugging you?” said Ben.
Dan finished his beer and looked thoughtful again.
“I’m not sure,” he said, “but I think I miss my characters.”
Ben looked at him quizzically.
“How so?”
“Well,” said Dan, “have you ever spent a long time, like a week, or maybe just a weekend, feeling really close to a small group of people? Like super close, you all know what the other person’s going to say.”
“Not really,” said Ben. “I am as solitary as an oyster.”
“Your turn to buy the beer,” said Dan.
Ben got up and did so.
“I suppose I have,” he said, sitting down. “Spent time I mean.”
“Afterwards,” said Dan, “you got home, you unpacked, you had a few hours left in your Sunday or whenever it was. Did you feel like you didn’t really know what to do? Like the time was useless?”
“Whenever I get home from traveling,” said Ben, “I feel like it’s the middle of the night and I’m awake for no reason, and I just want to go to bed.”
“Well,” said Dan, “I guess what I mean is you feel lonesome. You’ve gotten so used to those other people that you don’t really feel like yourself when they’re not around any more.”
“I can get that,” said Ben.
“Well,” said Dan, “I just spent a month with these people, and it was a stressful month, always something more to do, never enough time to get everything done. I got used to having them around, even if it was just in my head. I felt like I could rely on them, if that makes any sense.”
“It does,” said Ben. “I think. At least, I think I know what you’re talking about, it’s happened to me before.”
“Yeah?” said Dan, taking a drink.
“A couple years ago,” said Ben, “I finished a draft of something I’d been working on for a while. I put it away and worked on some other stuff, I was waiting for some distance before I could rewrite, you know?”
“Sure,” Dan said. He rewrote things nearly constantly in his line of work, but he had never seriously rewritten anything of his own, nor finished a long story before this recent project.
“I was working on a new story,” said Ben, “and something happened to one of the characters, and I caught myself wishing that I had one of the other characters, one from the story I’d just finished, I wished that I had that character in the new story I was writing, because I thought it would be fun to write. And I realized that for better or worse my time with those other characters was over, and it made me a little sad.”
“Sad,” said Dan. “Yes. Sad that the time is up.”
“Well you get to rewrite,” said Ben.
“Yeah, but is that really the same?” said Dan.
“True,” said Ben, not realizing that Dan hadn’t asked rhetorically. “When I rewrite I don’t feel like I’m finding out what’s happened, I’m just finding out if I can find a clearly way to put it down.”
“When I was a little kid,” said Dan, “I had a dream once. I dreamt that I lived on this island, or maybe another country, I don’t know. Anyway I spent years there. I’m not sure now, but I must have somehow been convinced of the passage of a huge amount of time. And there was a girl on the island with me. Nothing like that really, I was too little, but she was my friend. We knew each other, she felt like a part of me, through all that time. And then I woke up, and I realized that the girl wasn’t real, that she had never existed, and I’m not sure but I probably cried.”
“I’ve had similar experiences,” said Ben. “It’s a little devastating, all that time gone and none of it happened.”
“That’s how I feel about the characters in my story,” said Dan. “I feel like it’s all over, and it never really happened.”
“That is a little dissatisfying,” said Ben.
“And I thought never finishing anything was worse,” said Dan.
“This is worse than not finishing?” said Ben.
“Not really,” said Dan. “I was very pleased to get it done.”
“I’m sure,” said Ben. “Someone said, ‘finishing a job always feels good.’”
“Heinlein last time I checked,” said Dan.
“Him, too,” said Ben. “Someone else said, I think it was an Eastern Monarch--”
“Oh, God,” Dan said, rolling his eyes.
“He said,” continued Ben, “he wanted a sentence he could look at that would make him happy when he was sad.”
“Don’t stop talking,” Dan said. He got up and went to the bar.
“His wise men came back,” Ben resumed instantly as Dan sat back down with two beers, “they came back and said, we’ve got your sentence, it will make you happy when you’re sad, but there’s a catch.”
“If you know you’re crazy,” said Dan, “then you still have to fly the plane.”
“The catch was,” said Ben patiently, “that it would also make him sad when he was happy. You know what the saying was?”
“Pass the pepper?” said Dan.
“It said,” Ben concluded impressively, “this too shall pass.”
Dan fluttered his fingers and made a crowd cheering noise with his breath. Ben merely spread his hands as if to say there it is.
“Circumstances change,” said Dan. “Glib phrases don’t.”
“The trouble with it is,” said Ben, “the damn thing seems to be true.”
“If you keep thinking about it, sure,” said Dan.
“Well,” said Ben, “if you miss your characters so much, why not write a sequel?”
Dan who hadn’t finished one book made a scoffing noise at the idea of a follow-up.
“Sequels are never good art,” he said.
“You take that back,” said Ben. “You’ve seen Evil Dead 2.”
“With sequels,” Dan went on, “you have to twist the story to fit a mold, to get it to feel the same way. It’s not organic enough.”
“Well, it’s an option,” said Ben.
“One should never twist facts to fit theories,” Dan misquoted, “instead of twisting theories to fit facts.”
“Huh?” said Ben.
“You know what I mean,” said Dan. “The only thing worse than writing a whole new story just to give the characters something to do would be to write your new story, and give in to that temptation you were talking about a minute ago.”
“What temptation?” Ben said.
“To drag your old characters in by the head and shoulders just because you want to see them again,” said Dan. “That’s as lame as visiting your old war buddies just to make small talk.”
Ben considered this.
A young woman carrying a satchel strolled past their booth. “Hey guys,” she said as she passed.
“Hey Eva,” they both said, and she went on without stopping.
"I guess it's pretty lame," Ben said after a pause.
They finished their beers in silence.
“It’s probably always best,” Ben added after a moment, “to do as much new stuff as you can.”
“Possibly better,” said Dan. “Certainly tougher.”
They nodded.
“Well,” said Ben, rising, “I’m no longer sure if I’ve slept yet this week, so I’m out.”
“Same,” said Dan.
“I do have one thought for you though,” said Ben after they’d paid and were headed for the door.
“Oh?” said Dan.
“How much of that dream with the girl and the island do you remember?” he asked.
Dan stopped walking to think. “One or two images are clear,” he said, “the rest is sort of a haze.”
“My thought is,” said Ben, “you should take those images and start a story out of them. Maybe you can work your way back there for a while.”
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