BRISBANE WRITERS FESTIVAL
September 14th 2007 14:44
And it was at the Brisbane Writer’s Festival that I met Chasely, who showed me a short story she wrote about her affair with Beethoven. The story concluded with this: his nails were too long and he didn’t use his tongue enough.
That’s nice, I said.
My writing has become lazy recently. It’s been a little shaky. It’s not satisfied with how things are. It goes off in a corner and smokes and doesn’t want to talk to me. All it wants to do is wank around and buy things and wear sunglasses even though it’s indoors and we both perfectly know it’s night time. I punched my writing in the face and it cried and in the end - although reluctantly - I said sorry.
If there was anything that would make my writing work again, it was the Brisbane Writer’s Festival. I didn’t win the competition I entered, the Young Writer’s Award. I’ve been entering it for years now. Maybe my themes were all wrong. Maybe my writing didn’t shape up enough. Maybe it was frigid and lacked the drunkenness to flirt properly. Whatever it was, it wasn’t moving the Big People. It needed rehab.
I met an inspiring novelist in the Writer’s Festival who wrote for thirteen hours a day. I met another novelist who wrote two chapters every morning. These people breathed in words. They were these great sponges drenched in necessary thought. They partied with words. They smoked with words. They gambled with words. They drank with words. Words made them who they are. They were addicts of literature, and I wanted to shoot up with them.
Chasely and I walked out of a seminar. She put on her sunglasses. She showed me her tattoo. It was a square with nothing in it. She asked me: If you saw Satan in person, would you really know who you were looking at?
I woke up naked in either Chasely’s or Hank’s bed. I didn’t know whose bed it was because they were both lying next to me. The sheets were nice and expensive. The window in front of me was large, inviting. I walked up to it. As I was about to touch the glass, I was suddenly overcome with a shy sort of fear, a fear that didn’t seem too sure of itself. It gave me a quick glimpse of what would happen if the glass wasn’t there, if, in fact, the window was not a window but merely an opening to the city below. For a moment I believed it and hesitated. But then I saw my reflection. I twitched. I closed my eyes and touched the glass and left my fingerprint.
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Comment by Lara M
Love Speaks
Food Slate
Comment by Miss Nomer
bloody brilliant...I am so much older than you but have been exactly where you have been...so many things you write touch me...stay safe...walk away from windows with only panes......x Miss Nomer
Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen
Man, I'm so glad my busy assessment week is over. Yes, I'm going to keep working and working and improving.
Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen