Epic Close
I’m in the Woodland Library this afternoon, pouring out another chapter before I head home. I was evicted from my hotel room this morning and thought it best to head back and work for a few hours here.
I wrote more than 8,000 words in the past two days, and a few of them are keepers. While I predicted equal parts success and failure two blogs ago, I can honestly say that the exercise was, indeed, a success. Whether or not the work is of any decent quality is another matter.
At this point in my life, in my career of writing, I am not very concerned. The point is to get the story out. I will worry about quality later.
Here’s another excerpt. Our narrator, Charlie, has just embarked on his life as a “reverse engineer”:
My father continued to bring home broken things, and I would take them apart and fix them. I commandeered the entirety of the garage, forcing my parents to park their vehicles in the driveway. My mother accepted my enterprise, but not with the same enthusiasm as my father. Perhaps she saw something else inside me, something missing. We were not an affectionate family; rather, we lived as three islands off the coast, each with our own economy, our own need to maintain independence. When I think back, I cannot recall a time when we ever hugged or kissed except when protocol dictated.
I never questioned this lack in our family. It simply was. But now, I consider my own demeanor, my inability to maintain relationships throughout my life, save for one ill-fated friendship. Was I the cause, or the effect? All that is left of this family is me, so I cannot ask such a question to anyone but myself. And when I do, no answer comes, only an irritating sense of loss. What once was my shelter, my protection from the world, my only experience with trust and love—it is gone and will never return.