The Ongoing Reality Show Fiction
Jun 18, 2007
Problems with the letter W
I was at the Purple Crab, finishing a strawberry milkshake when the idea came to me. A story about a man who's convinced the letter W is out to get him. I always wanted to write a story where the narrator goes crazy. I was pretty sure I could work in that the letter W was somehow created by a sect of chthonic alien creatures. That'd be great. No wait, the chthonic alien creatures could be shaped like Ws. Or they could have W shaped pupils or something. And the whole thing could be full of like, tense switches, and it could switch from first person to third person. The whole thing could be a mindfuck. I told the barman about my idea immediately without making any eye contact.
"So I had this idea for a story, it's about like, it's about this guy who thinks the letter W is out to get him." I swirled at the ice cream at the bottom of my shake. "It's going to be like, a total mindfuck."
He didn't say anything.
I decided the whole thing could take place in a coffee shop. No that was stupid, the whole thing would take place in an all night diner, it'd be a conversation between the main guy and his crazy friend who was convinced W monsters were out to get him. And at first the guy thought it was stupid, but then he starts to lose it too. Wait then it all couldn't take place in a diner. Some of it could take place in a diner. The first scene. Then there would be another scene. Maybe there'd be two more scenes. I drummed my finger on the bar, my milkshake was finished and if I had another I'd feel sick so I went home. On the train I had a million more ideas but when I got back I didn't write any of them down.
***
I left my W story idea in my subconscious for a while. I did some research (Wikipedia, WWW) on the letter W, it's the 23rd letter, two plus three is five. According to the Pythagorean numerological system W represented five. Coincidence, but whatever, Five is the number of instability and imbalance. Fine. I checked the time. The reciprocal SI prefix of five is Femto, according to the Pythagorean numerological system Femto is six plus five plus four plus two plus six which comes to twenty three, W is the twenty third letter in the alphabet. I went to bed.
***
I managed to write part of the first scene. I put it in a 24 hour McDonalds because I don't think there are any all night diners in this country. Maybe truck stops, but I don't want to write a story about a trucker. I named the main character's friend Bill, but I couldn't think of anything for the main character himself. If you flip the golden arches upside down they look like a W but I didn't know if I wanted to put that in. I decided not to mention it in the story but I'd let the readers work it out. Write, writer, wrote all start with the letter W and I thought about making the main character a writer but decided against it. Who wants to read a story about a writer?
I arranged to go to the Purple Crab with my friend Will but he wanted to catch the 5.55 train. I agreed but I made us catch a different train.
***
So I'm sitting in the Purple Crab and I say to the bartender where do you live and he says "Walsall" and he stares at me. The letter W is like, two Vs, maybe the chthonic aliens can have V shaped eyes, but two of them so it's a double V. I order a strawberry milkshake. The character can go crazy and the doctor can prescribe him Wellbutrin. Wellbutrin was created in the eighties but caused seizures so they halved the dosage and created a slow release version, Wellbutrin XL. A seizure can be a sensation of fear. They trained dogs that can get help and stop you walking into the middle of the road when you have a seizure. Jeffrey Dahmer was convinced demons were communicating with him through dogs. When they caught him his fridge contained a human head and a jar of mustard. I'm a little relieved when I run the numbers on Wellbutrin and find out they're not five. My phone number has five fives in it. I should put that in the story.
***
At the Purple crab I got myself a strawberry milkshake and Will got a rum and coke. We sat in a corner booth and talked. He'd just got some sort of System Analyst job at some computing company and we made jokes about the abbreviation being "Sysanal.". I never noticed how much the bartender at the Purple Crab blinks. He blinks a hell of a lot. People who blink too much and people who don't blink at all are really weird. Maybe I should make Bill never blink. Or the chthonic aliens can never blink. Small traits like this are important in creating memorable characters. Maybe.
Will told me he likes some girl at work, I said he should make a move or something but he told me that
"Everyone says workplace romances are totally a bad idea,"
I said I don't know about that and he said
"Yeah, well you wouldn't."
And I didn't like the way he said you.
On the train home I tried to think of important people from history who had W in their name. They could be part of the W-people's conspiracy. Famous inventors maybe, they could have been given their ideas from the W-people. No-one really obvious occurred to me though. Apart from Wario. Or George W. Bush. He's too obvious though. If I could find a president from the 80s or something I could make it a period piece. I wanted to do one of those since I saw Donnie Darko. George Bush Sr has a W in his name. Maybe I could set it in the 90s.
***
At home I went over the part I'd already written, added some commas, removed a couple of adjectives. The only worthwhile thing that has ever happened to me whilst stoned was that I realised that you should barely ever use adjectives. I tried to add a couple paragraphs but they just dragged because I couldn't work out where to set the second scene.
***
I found out there's such a thing as Lambert's W function, named after Johann Lambert but I couldn't really understand the Wikipedia article about it and I don't want to write about things I don't understand. I also found out that W is the symbol for an amino acid called Tryptophan which can cause hallucinations and delusions if improperly metabolised. I decided that next part of the story should be fractured as the main character (still no name) gets crazier. Definitely not one long rolling chapter, it should be broken up, disjointed. Maybe Bill can have difficulty metabolising Tryptophan
***
I put my elbows on the bar and knock over my milkshake glass which is already empty. I lean towards the bartender who narrows his eyes at me.
"Look man, all I'm saying is that the letter W is wierd, I'm not saying that there IS some race of chthonic creator aliens that implanted it in our language artificially as a means to glorify themselves. Or-" I swirl my arm around in the air, fishing for words "-or like..that it somehow..like it's somehow a chant, like a mantra to summon them into being. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying it's weird, it's got three syllables and it's pronounced "Double-you" even though it's shaped like two Vs."
***
Maybe put some religious imagery in the story. Can't think of any religions that feature the letter W to any extent though, plus they're mostly written in Hebrew or Aramaic or whatever.
***
I found a wikiHow on creating a credible villain in fiction which made me think of putting a villain into the story. Maybe the leader of some sort of cult that worships the W people. It's a bit Lovecraftian though, and I've not actually read many Lovecraft stories. I did see the trailer for the new Chthulu film though. It seemed pretty good. I started following links from the wikiHow and ended up on the NanoWriMo page which depressed me because I told everyone I was going to do it last year but I totally failed. I haven't even opened that text file since last November. I think about doing it every so often, maybe cracking the first couple paragraphs out and sending them to some soulless online art mag but I feel that would be like admitting defeat, like admitting I'm never going to finish that story.
***
Sunshine, you are my sunshine I wonder if girls call Daisy get sick of guys singing that tell me your answer true song. Anyway, I set the second part of the story in the guy's apartment and at his job, I started calling him W, at first just as a substitute until I could make a real name but now I'm beginning to like it. Maybe that's the kind of twist I deliver at the end though. That his name is W. At his job he just starts thinking the W key on his keyboard is a different font. I checked my W key and it's normal.
W is the symbol for tungsten because tungsten used to be called wolfram, Tungsten is used in light bulbs because it has the highest melting point of any metal. Advances that would have led to longer lasting light bulbs have been suppressed by the Phoebus cartel which was set up in 1924. They've been less powerful in recent years, allowing compact fluorescent light bulbs which can fit into standard light sockets to reach the market. I thought about naming someone in the story Wolfram, it sounded good for some sort of shadowy agent figure. Maybe the Phoebus cartel could be in the story and their leader is called Wolfram. I ditched the idea after my agent said that the Phoebus cartel were in Gravity's Rainbow.
My agent said I should get a haircut. My agent's name is Wolfram, wolfram is an archaic name for tungsten, tungsten is used in light bulbs, light bulb technology is controlled by the Phoebus cartel which was set up in 1924 and persists to this day, their leader is named Wolfram like my agent. My agent phoned me.
"Hey, this is W. " I said.
"W, listen, we need to get you out of the country, forces are in motion, we suspect Wolfram is behind it."
"Isn't your name Wolfram?"
"No Wolfram, my name is Will, dammit man don't flake on me now, look - I don't have much time, just stay ready ok?"
"Sure man, cool.. - Oh - you want to go to the Purple Crab this evening? You made a move on that girl yet?"
"People say workplace romances are a bad idea, you should know that."
I didn't like the way he said you
***
At the Purple Crab that night Bill wasn't drinking his usual rum and coke and we were talking about the Omega Constant. The Omega Constant is the value of W(1) where W is lambert's W function. The value of Omega is approximately point-five-six-seven-one-four-three-two-nine-zero-four-zero-nine-seven-eight-three-eight-seven-two-nine-nine-nine-nine-six-eight-six-six-two. Bill's telling me about light bulbs.
"You ever measured a light bulb I mean a standard, a standard incandescent light bulb? Around the widest part, and around the narrowest part? The ratio of the two? Point-five-six-seven, I tried seven different brands and they're all point-five-six-seven. You ever ah, measure the ellipses on the base that connect to a standard double contact bayonet fitting? You ever measure their length and their width? Divided them? Point-five-six-seven. Is this not enough for you? Is this not enough information? That light is flickering" He ducks down.
"What?"
Bill waves his arms, tries to pull me down to the table level.
"That. Light. Is. Flickering, I've got to go, forces are in motion, that's their signal, that's their signal you just I've got to go, I need extraction." He gets up, starts picking up his jacket, loosens his tie, his neck snaps left to right like an anxious driver coming up to a junction.
"Hey, did you make a move on that girl Bill?" I ask him as he leaves, he has to turn around and take two steps back to my table, he puts his face very close to mine.
"What girl? You think this is the time? I don't have a clue what girl you're talking about. I. Have. To. Go" and he scurries, half crouched behind the bar and through the service entrance.
www
Later at home I thought more about the W story. The pacing was bothering me. The gradient of his insanity seemed at times too steep. Then again I wasn't writing a novel, I couldn't afford the luxuries of time afforded by a longer form. Great artists work within the limitations of the current medium or pick a new medium. I just made that up but it could be true.
I tried copying and pasting a couple of the paragraphs to mess with how crazy the main guy was getting but it meant there was a couple of errors. I sort of liked it that way though, I thought it made it more jarring so I saved the .txt as a separate file.
I use Notepad SX for all my writing by the way, it's a great program and if you spend any time writing anything I suggest you use it. It's tabbed and you can put it into full screen mode. It's not too good at writing program code though, so you might want to bear that in mind. I had to change the letter spacing on my version because otherwise everything I write just seems to be full of Ws.
***
I'm in the Purple Crab drinking a straberry milkshake. The bartender is cleaning a glass. The sun is setting and I think about measuring some parts of the bartender's hands to make sure they're not in the ratio point-six-seven. That's one of the ways of finding a cult member, they cut don the tip of the ring finger on the left hand until it's at a point-five-six-seven ratio to the second segment of the finger. The light that Bill was talking about last eek is still blinking but I've had fresh intelligence from my agent that the cartel is no longer using bulbs to communicate. I detect no possible threats aside from the barman ho, in all my time at the Purple Crab has not declared allegiance to any party. All he does it stand at the bar, clean glasses, dispense straberry milkshakes and blink. He still blinks a hell of a lot. Like there's something rong ith his eyes.
***
My agent called me whilst I was finishing of the W story. In the end I'd decided that the second and third scenes would blend together into a montage of insanity. I picked up the phone mid sentence.
"Hey Riaz, have you heard anything from Will lately?"
"Nah, last time I saw him he was ditching me up in the Purple Crab"
"Oh yeah, I read about that in his blog."
"I didn't know Will had a blog."
"Yeah, yeah it's like paranoidescapes.blogspot.com. He invents paranoid delusional fantasies and uses them as reasons to make really big exits from boring social events then he writes about it on the blog. He puts up Youtube videos sometimes. Actually he might have switched to Google Video. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it actually, it's pretty well known. He sells t-shirts and stuff."
"Like, Cafepress t-shirts?"
"Nah, American Apparel, it's pretty pro, anyway I wanted to know if you finished that W story you kept on going on about."
"Nearly, it's nearly done, the first draft is."
"Because your mother was reading the newspaper and she found some local short story competition thing. You should probably focus your mind on that."
"What? Why did she tell you about this? Why didn't she tell me? What am I meant to do with the W story? I'm half way though a sentence."
"Eh just leave as it is, sort of a Easton Ellis thing, You know he wrote his first book when he was nineteen? You're behind already."
"Did my mother tell you to say that?"
"Yes."
"Fantastic. I'll stop writing the W story then, you really think that mid sentence thing can work?"
"Definitely ¶ 10:12 PM 0 Comments
"So I had this idea for a story, it's about like, it's about this guy who thinks the letter W is out to get him." I swirled at the ice cream at the bottom of my shake. "It's going to be like, a total mindfuck."
He didn't say anything.
I decided the whole thing could take place in a coffee shop. No that was stupid, the whole thing would take place in an all night diner, it'd be a conversation between the main guy and his crazy friend who was convinced W monsters were out to get him. And at first the guy thought it was stupid, but then he starts to lose it too. Wait then it all couldn't take place in a diner. Some of it could take place in a diner. The first scene. Then there would be another scene. Maybe there'd be two more scenes. I drummed my finger on the bar, my milkshake was finished and if I had another I'd feel sick so I went home. On the train I had a million more ideas but when I got back I didn't write any of them down.
***
I left my W story idea in my subconscious for a while. I did some research (Wikipedia, WWW) on the letter W, it's the 23rd letter, two plus three is five. According to the Pythagorean numerological system W represented five. Coincidence, but whatever, Five is the number of instability and imbalance. Fine. I checked the time. The reciprocal SI prefix of five is Femto, according to the Pythagorean numerological system Femto is six plus five plus four plus two plus six which comes to twenty three, W is the twenty third letter in the alphabet. I went to bed.
***
I managed to write part of the first scene. I put it in a 24 hour McDonalds because I don't think there are any all night diners in this country. Maybe truck stops, but I don't want to write a story about a trucker. I named the main character's friend Bill, but I couldn't think of anything for the main character himself. If you flip the golden arches upside down they look like a W but I didn't know if I wanted to put that in. I decided not to mention it in the story but I'd let the readers work it out. Write, writer, wrote all start with the letter W and I thought about making the main character a writer but decided against it. Who wants to read a story about a writer?
I arranged to go to the Purple Crab with my friend Will but he wanted to catch the 5.55 train. I agreed but I made us catch a different train.
***
So I'm sitting in the Purple Crab and I say to the bartender where do you live and he says "Walsall" and he stares at me. The letter W is like, two Vs, maybe the chthonic aliens can have V shaped eyes, but two of them so it's a double V. I order a strawberry milkshake. The character can go crazy and the doctor can prescribe him Wellbutrin. Wellbutrin was created in the eighties but caused seizures so they halved the dosage and created a slow release version, Wellbutrin XL. A seizure can be a sensation of fear. They trained dogs that can get help and stop you walking into the middle of the road when you have a seizure. Jeffrey Dahmer was convinced demons were communicating with him through dogs. When they caught him his fridge contained a human head and a jar of mustard. I'm a little relieved when I run the numbers on Wellbutrin and find out they're not five. My phone number has five fives in it. I should put that in the story.
***
At the Purple crab I got myself a strawberry milkshake and Will got a rum and coke. We sat in a corner booth and talked. He'd just got some sort of System Analyst job at some computing company and we made jokes about the abbreviation being "Sysanal.". I never noticed how much the bartender at the Purple Crab blinks. He blinks a hell of a lot. People who blink too much and people who don't blink at all are really weird. Maybe I should make Bill never blink. Or the chthonic aliens can never blink. Small traits like this are important in creating memorable characters. Maybe.
Will told me he likes some girl at work, I said he should make a move or something but he told me that
"Everyone says workplace romances are totally a bad idea,"
I said I don't know about that and he said
"Yeah, well you wouldn't."
And I didn't like the way he said you.
On the train home I tried to think of important people from history who had W in their name. They could be part of the W-people's conspiracy. Famous inventors maybe, they could have been given their ideas from the W-people. No-one really obvious occurred to me though. Apart from Wario. Or George W. Bush. He's too obvious though. If I could find a president from the 80s or something I could make it a period piece. I wanted to do one of those since I saw Donnie Darko. George Bush Sr has a W in his name. Maybe I could set it in the 90s.
***
At home I went over the part I'd already written, added some commas, removed a couple of adjectives. The only worthwhile thing that has ever happened to me whilst stoned was that I realised that you should barely ever use adjectives. I tried to add a couple paragraphs but they just dragged because I couldn't work out where to set the second scene.
***
I found out there's such a thing as Lambert's W function, named after Johann Lambert but I couldn't really understand the Wikipedia article about it and I don't want to write about things I don't understand. I also found out that W is the symbol for an amino acid called Tryptophan which can cause hallucinations and delusions if improperly metabolised. I decided that next part of the story should be fractured as the main character (still no name) gets crazier. Definitely not one long rolling chapter, it should be broken up, disjointed. Maybe Bill can have difficulty metabolising Tryptophan
***
I put my elbows on the bar and knock over my milkshake glass which is already empty. I lean towards the bartender who narrows his eyes at me.
"Look man, all I'm saying is that the letter W is wierd, I'm not saying that there IS some race of chthonic creator aliens that implanted it in our language artificially as a means to glorify themselves. Or-" I swirl my arm around in the air, fishing for words "-or like..that it somehow..like it's somehow a chant, like a mantra to summon them into being. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying it's weird, it's got three syllables and it's pronounced "Double-you" even though it's shaped like two Vs."
***
Maybe put some religious imagery in the story. Can't think of any religions that feature the letter W to any extent though, plus they're mostly written in Hebrew or Aramaic or whatever.
***
I found a wikiHow on creating a credible villain in fiction which made me think of putting a villain into the story. Maybe the leader of some sort of cult that worships the W people. It's a bit Lovecraftian though, and I've not actually read many Lovecraft stories. I did see the trailer for the new Chthulu film though. It seemed pretty good. I started following links from the wikiHow and ended up on the NanoWriMo page which depressed me because I told everyone I was going to do it last year but I totally failed. I haven't even opened that text file since last November. I think about doing it every so often, maybe cracking the first couple paragraphs out and sending them to some soulless online art mag but I feel that would be like admitting defeat, like admitting I'm never going to finish that story.
***
Sunshine, you are my sunshine I wonder if girls call Daisy get sick of guys singing that tell me your answer true song. Anyway, I set the second part of the story in the guy's apartment and at his job, I started calling him W, at first just as a substitute until I could make a real name but now I'm beginning to like it. Maybe that's the kind of twist I deliver at the end though. That his name is W. At his job he just starts thinking the W key on his keyboard is a different font. I checked my W key and it's normal.
W is the symbol for tungsten because tungsten used to be called wolfram, Tungsten is used in light bulbs because it has the highest melting point of any metal. Advances that would have led to longer lasting light bulbs have been suppressed by the Phoebus cartel which was set up in 1924. They've been less powerful in recent years, allowing compact fluorescent light bulbs which can fit into standard light sockets to reach the market. I thought about naming someone in the story Wolfram, it sounded good for some sort of shadowy agent figure. Maybe the Phoebus cartel could be in the story and their leader is called Wolfram. I ditched the idea after my agent said that the Phoebus cartel were in Gravity's Rainbow.
My agent said I should get a haircut. My agent's name is Wolfram, wolfram is an archaic name for tungsten, tungsten is used in light bulbs, light bulb technology is controlled by the Phoebus cartel which was set up in 1924 and persists to this day, their leader is named Wolfram like my agent. My agent phoned me.
"Hey, this is W. " I said.
"W, listen, we need to get you out of the country, forces are in motion, we suspect Wolfram is behind it."
"Isn't your name Wolfram?"
"No Wolfram, my name is Will, dammit man don't flake on me now, look - I don't have much time, just stay ready ok?"
"Sure man, cool.. - Oh - you want to go to the Purple Crab this evening? You made a move on that girl yet?"
"People say workplace romances are a bad idea, you should know that."
I didn't like the way he said you
***
At the Purple Crab that night Bill wasn't drinking his usual rum and coke and we were talking about the Omega Constant. The Omega Constant is the value of W(1) where W is lambert's W function. The value of Omega is approximately point-five-six-seven-one-four-three-two-nine-zero-four-zero-nine-seven-eight-three-eight-seven-two-nine-nine-nine-nine-six-eight-six-six-two. Bill's telling me about light bulbs.
"You ever measured a light bulb I mean a standard, a standard incandescent light bulb? Around the widest part, and around the narrowest part? The ratio of the two? Point-five-six-seven, I tried seven different brands and they're all point-five-six-seven. You ever ah, measure the ellipses on the base that connect to a standard double contact bayonet fitting? You ever measure their length and their width? Divided them? Point-five-six-seven. Is this not enough for you? Is this not enough information? That light is flickering" He ducks down.
"What?"
Bill waves his arms, tries to pull me down to the table level.
"That. Light. Is. Flickering, I've got to go, forces are in motion, that's their signal, that's their signal you just I've got to go, I need extraction." He gets up, starts picking up his jacket, loosens his tie, his neck snaps left to right like an anxious driver coming up to a junction.
"Hey, did you make a move on that girl Bill?" I ask him as he leaves, he has to turn around and take two steps back to my table, he puts his face very close to mine.
"What girl? You think this is the time? I don't have a clue what girl you're talking about. I. Have. To. Go" and he scurries, half crouched behind the bar and through the service entrance.
www
Later at home I thought more about the W story. The pacing was bothering me. The gradient of his insanity seemed at times too steep. Then again I wasn't writing a novel, I couldn't afford the luxuries of time afforded by a longer form. Great artists work within the limitations of the current medium or pick a new medium. I just made that up but it could be true.
I tried copying and pasting a couple of the paragraphs to mess with how crazy the main guy was getting but it meant there was a couple of errors. I sort of liked it that way though, I thought it made it more jarring so I saved the .txt as a separate file.
I use Notepad SX for all my writing by the way, it's a great program and if you spend any time writing anything I suggest you use it. It's tabbed and you can put it into full screen mode. It's not too good at writing program code though, so you might want to bear that in mind. I had to change the letter spacing on my version because otherwise everything I write just seems to be full of Ws.
***
I'm in the Purple Crab drinking a straberry milkshake. The bartender is cleaning a glass. The sun is setting and I think about measuring some parts of the bartender's hands to make sure they're not in the ratio point-six-seven. That's one of the ways of finding a cult member, they cut don the tip of the ring finger on the left hand until it's at a point-five-six-seven ratio to the second segment of the finger. The light that Bill was talking about last eek is still blinking but I've had fresh intelligence from my agent that the cartel is no longer using bulbs to communicate. I detect no possible threats aside from the barman ho, in all my time at the Purple Crab has not declared allegiance to any party. All he does it stand at the bar, clean glasses, dispense straberry milkshakes and blink. He still blinks a hell of a lot. Like there's something rong ith his eyes.
***
My agent called me whilst I was finishing of the W story. In the end I'd decided that the second and third scenes would blend together into a montage of insanity. I picked up the phone mid sentence.
"Hey Riaz, have you heard anything from Will lately?"
"Nah, last time I saw him he was ditching me up in the Purple Crab"
"Oh yeah, I read about that in his blog."
"I didn't know Will had a blog."
"Yeah, yeah it's like paranoidescapes.blogspot.com. He invents paranoid delusional fantasies and uses them as reasons to make really big exits from boring social events then he writes about it on the blog. He puts up Youtube videos sometimes. Actually he might have switched to Google Video. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it actually, it's pretty well known. He sells t-shirts and stuff."
"Like, Cafepress t-shirts?"
"Nah, American Apparel, it's pretty pro, anyway I wanted to know if you finished that W story you kept on going on about."
"Nearly, it's nearly done, the first draft is."
"Because your mother was reading the newspaper and she found some local short story competition thing. You should probably focus your mind on that."
"What? Why did she tell you about this? Why didn't she tell me? What am I meant to do with the W story? I'm half way though a sentence."
"Eh just leave as it is, sort of a Easton Ellis thing, You know he wrote his first book when he was nineteen? You're behind already."
"Did my mother tell you to say that?"
"Yes."
"Fantastic. I'll stop writing the W story then, you really think that mid sentence thing can work?"
"Definitely ¶ 10:12 PM 0 Comments