NOVEL ATTEMPT ON LIFE

 

1. Attempt on Life

After a week in the gallery, drafting and illustrating, there was a moment when all the text seemed to slide off the pages of the manuscript in front of me.   Box People , the novel I've been living with for 15 years, was erasing itself.  Time to give up, split up, bail out.  Kill the thing. 

2.Manuscript

I had the familiar urge to scrumple the papers into 250 balls, but I refined this into making paper aeroplanes. With the help of invisible tape, the planes became flowers.  I folded until my wrist burned, the skin peeled off my left thumb and I got bored.

3.More Manuscript

I put the rest of the manuscript on a chair.  Where my bum should be.    

4.Disposal Chair

I got a better chair.  This may have been a mistake. Now I have two chairs and I have to sit on one.  Which means getting back to writing.

5.Hooks

Not enough in my narrative so far, so I added a few.

6. Fishing line

Tension, suspense, threads.  And they shine so pleasingly under gallery spotlights.

7.Guests (not pictured)

People visit.  They smile at the flowers.  I show them what's left of my first novel and they laugh sadly.  At first I tell them that they're looking at the death of a novel, but they get upset. Friends and complete strangers lobby for the death penalty to be revoked.  I am touched by their concern for a piece of writing that they have never met, and that may in fact be rotten to the core. They suggest a life sentence on a USB in a far away place, rehabilitation in the form of poetry or short stories, or community service as a youth arts project.  The jury is still out.