My Aborted Prose

The sun rose, in that sort of fiery glistening style it usually does. I always like to start with some sort of description of dawn. It's a rather nice time but my descriptions always seem to lack any sort of soul. To be truthful, of course, the sun did nothing at all, it was late evening on an October Sunday and the sky did that dull uneventful thing it always seems to. Yet I should take comfort that somewhere, the sun was rising, and it was more fiery and glistening than I would ever see – the grass is always greener, no? Anyway the state of the sky and in fact a vague date and time having been established I should venture into the uncharted territory of some sort of narrative.

Well best to begin nine months ago when the whole thing began. I was lying in bed one morning, the sun was rising, glistening and fiery but somewhat lacklustre and uninspiring. Then it hit me a little spark – something to do with neural patterns and brainwaves and all that. Somewhere it was conceived a little gleaming centre one of those most precious things. Those little electrical signals that are at the birth of all those distractions from the primary objectives of eating, sleeping and reproducing. I rushed to the computer. It took a dreadfully long time to load. As it loaded I felt offended by its cold logical progressions – it didn't have what I had, sure it had been born of one but it didn't have what I now possessed, it was inferior. Whilst I stewed in my contempt, Windows treated me to a little jingle for my pleasure. I snorted at its pathetic attempt to curry favour. Metal bastard. However I didn't share my dislike for it with the computer, whatever I thought of it I needed its power. Then I began. I typed and typed and typed – the words flowing out of me like extra appendages – don't ask me what they said I can't remember now, but it was stunning, it was natural – everything was right. Every morning this process would continue. I saw the words and constituent letters wrack up on the unsightly simulation of a page. From time to time I mused on the nature of paper and how I'd prefer parchment, but that mattered not, for even the pixelated punctuation seemed beautiful.

Sometimes I would think of my strange mutually dependant relationship with the lifeless box sitting next to me and its associated other boxes all similarly grey and distasteful. Not even their friendly curved edges would curb my dislike for them. They sat there, smug in the knowledge that I needed them to perform my demands as much as they needed me to press a button.

The months progressed and the words and fake pages and letters and commas and glorious hyphens – I do so like hyphens – stacked up. They still all seemed perfect, all so lovingly crafted – art no less! A picture paints a thousand words, with 2000 words I can make two pictures and my word count was going up. I'd wipe the smile of that conceited little Mona Lisa, she'd be on her way to Edvard Munch.

Then it came to today, a nine month process. I wake up eager to read over my work, my creation. I caress the first few lines tenderly with my eyes. I am the proud father and the mother – this was the asexual reproduction of authorship. Then, paragraph two, three, four – marvellous, beautiful everyone of them. Then, I felt lost. Where was I going, where was the plot, what on earth was I thinking. Still born. It was dead on the monitor, lifeless. It would soon be consigned to the recycle bin with all the other concept shaped fetuses.

Back to the drawing board.