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Adventure Contemporary Western

"We have plenty of time," I sit here thinking to myself, settling my MacBook on my lap and typing away. We're on the road, my wife and I. I'm sitting behind the fuzzy dashboard in the lengthy passenger seat, and my wife, she's revving Fatima into fourth gear. Fatima's engine rumbles, and we are off.


For the Love of the Road; a poem


Kerouac’s

On the Road’s

Anniversary

Is comin’ up

There’s a blog

That’s givin’ away

A $250 prize

To the winner of a short

Story contest-

The subject, its anniversary,

Kind of


I just bought

Sulla Strada

In a bookstore here in

an Italian village

Just after my wife and I 

Met with a midwife

This roadside afternoon


Now I think I’ll

Write a short about it

Along with this poem


I'm sure all starving, young writers

At one point or another

Gather in little, likely groups,

And read each other's works,

Thinking to themselves

"We were never going to make it."



I wrote a poem earlier about writing just such a story as I am writing right now. I refer, in the poem, to the Reedsy blog, which, as of late, I’ve only visited to quickly copy-paste the biography in the author’s bio section into my author’s bio on other story blogsites, yes, only to copy-paste my author’s bio, which sits like an old, dead castle in the right-hand margin of my Reedsy blog page, in order to use it elsewhere. Copying and pasting, the lazy, to-be professional writer’s pastime. I’ve been sending my work into various online Lit Mags, and so far, I’ve gotten no catches. I have received some good, critical feedback. Something’s gotta give.


The reason I gave into writing just such a story as this one, which I told myself I wouldn’t write due to their recently trying to progress their website’s initiative through an inhibitive submission fee, is because I wanted to let the Reedsy team in on a few hints. A few surprises.


When I first moved to this country, Italy, I had kept up on the Reedsy blog, turning in short stories for every prompt in line with the subject matter. Then, one day not long ago, I saw it: the e-mail, the announcement of the $5 entry fee, in keeping with the bump-up of the prize money. I stopped posting stories on the blog. So far, with a few exceptions, I haven’t enjoyed the winners each week. Now, throughout my searching through the entries in the contests, I’ve come across quite a few short stories which I actually enjoyed, but none of those stories were ever winners. The winners were, from what I could see, always people who used out-dated, overused, and obviously melodramatic tricks to get their work to seem trophy-worthy. Things like tragic topics and catchy titles and stuff like that. Some real life stuff here and there, but nothing I would call Literature. Literature takes luck. This is why I decided to give this $5 entry fee a go, to let the Reedsy team in on a few hints which I think would interest them, and their general readership.


Since I stopped turning in weekly entries a little while ago, due to me being stubborn and not wanting to pay the new fee (though I’ve been paying submission fees to multiple Lit Mags which’ve also been bypassing my work, and these actions, exhibiting themselves as silly self-contradictions, are the reasons I refer to myself as stubborn), there has continued in the wake of silence which has remained as my Reedsy blog page a strange series of coincidences.


So, rather than continuing to edit the novel which I’ve completed, and further organize the book of poems which I’m sending out to all the publishers, online and in-person, that I can reach, I’ve decided to go into a short update on the serendipitous series of coincidences which have been following me and my writerly silence by way of the Reedsy prompts over the last month.


My new wife sits behind the wheel, driving beautiful Fatima (the name given to our trusty home-on-wheels). Fatima, Fatima, the old sprinter van which has been our home and our life for the past few months as we drove all over Italy, and part of France, living the Bohemian life, and enjoying every minute of it.


We’re returning back to the town we’re currently staying in from a quick visit to a nearby city, where we had our first meeting with my wife’s new Gynecologist and the midwife. Newly married, we’ve only just found out we’re going to be having our first child. Fatima, our lovely van, our trusty home on the road, will soon retire to a driveway, as we begin a new chapter in our life. Back to the writerly serendipity which I mentioned earlier and still haven’t fully explained (very similar in style to the plot schemata in Kerouac’s On the Road). To begin with the following unveiling: I first began my life as a writer after reading Kerouac. Before Kerouac entered my life I saw everything around me as a dull, un-sagacious wasteland.


During last few months, in a continuous series, every single Reedsy prompt has corresponded with major, life-changing situations I’ve been experiencing here in Italy.


Here begins the line of coincidences, to clear things up for the Reeder.


The first, beginning with contest # 106, which ended on 23:59, Aug 13, 2021 EST.


Contest #106: Periergia

Ever found yourself experiencing a newfound appreciation for something you see or do every day? Maybe you think fondly of how many people have stood on the same street corner as you, or appreciate the centuries of craftsmanship that it took to develop the humble coffee mug you hold in your hand. 


When you feel like waxing lyrical about the everyday, you might call it periergia — using flowery language to describe something trivial. While this is usually a writing no-no (purple prose, anyone?), there's something irresistible about romanticizing the mundane once in a while. So this week, we’re looking for beauty in unexpected places, whether that’s a character, something they see, or anything in-between.


The village we are in here in Italy is named Pergine. Coincidence? I don’t think so.


Contest #107: Liar, Liar

Oscar Wilde was right when he wrote that ‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple.’ The truth can be complicated, messy, liberating — and subjective! Which doesn't make it easy to draw a clean line between fact and fiction.


We’ve all been affected by someone telling a lie, and no doubt all told some ourselves — whether that’s swearing to our teacher that the dog ate our homework, or attempting to cover up for something much bigger. This week’s prompts encourage you to think about the ripple effects that telling the truth or a lie can have, and the gray area between the two.


I told my wife the following lie: I said that I would stop drinking.


Contest #108 Elemental

Water, air, fire, earth, and void: together, these five elements make up one of the earliest systems used to understand our world. Ancient cultures in Greece, Persia, India, and elsewhere all believed that everything they saw could be broken down into these five core categories. While the system doesn’t hold much water scientifically, we still hear echoes of these ancient classifications today — from the groups of astrological signs, to the magical systems of fantasy worlds.


For this week’s prompts, I’m going back to basics, and exploring each of the five core elements in turn. I’m excited to see what you build out of the building blocks of — well, everything!


I’ve been deepening my meditation practice while here in the Mediterranean, a skip away from the magical land of ancient Greece: living in the strange summer elemental anomalies of a Northern Italian summer landscape.


#109: Working Hard, Hardly Working

For better or worse, a lot of our identity (or at least, how people perceive us) is tied to what we do for a living. As well as making up the daily rhythm of our lives, a lot of our goals and aspirations are career-based. Whether you’re a workaholic or living for the weekend, this week we’re diving into the world of work, writing about dream jobs — and the not-so-dreamy jobs.


When this prompt was live, as it were, my wife was yelling at me for not finding a job, which I now have. I’m now an English teacher in the city nearby the town we’re staying in. But at the time, we were broke, and I was hard up for work. 


I was still drinking and writing though, of course. And meditating.


#110: Hit the Road, Jack

On September 5th, 1957, Jack Kerouac published On the Road — a hugely influential novel, swelling with jazz, heat, and Americana, that follows free-spirited mavericks Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty on their travels across the States. To celebrate its 64th anniversary, this week’s prompts all take place on the long and winding road (or right next to it). Safe travels!


The only reason I ever attempted to become a writer is because I once, many years ago, read On the Road when I was in college. This was the sole experience which led me to drop out of college and live a life on the road, to try and become a real writer. The act which eventually, now many years later, led me to write this short story here, on this blog. Which led me to put a little faith into a $5 fee’s short worth.


And so, driving back to town, my wife looks over at me with that quick smile of hers as the sun sets outside the van windshield and lights up her beautiful face in a timeless, inexplicable show of lights and glamour, and I look down at my laptop, and hope someone on the Reedsy team has the eyes to see the real life on the page which I’ve left here.


My uncle, a semi-famous screenwriter whose name I won’t mention but whose name rhymes with Rob Cosborn, once sent me some feedback on one of my stories. What he said, I think, could be of much use to many, many up-and-coming writers.


What, ultimately, are these expressive and evocative thoughts in the service of, what drives them and our interest in them? Take Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, which takes place all in one day as she plans a party, but covers a lifetime of rumination and observation -- of herself, her marriage, her life.... it is about loneliness, isolation, and the need for reaching out to others and communication even as she withholds so much. And even though it's not our lives, we relate to her small mercies, regrets, and realizations. Or more to the point, Kerouac's On the Road, which was thematically about possibility and freedom even if it was at the cost of unavoidable melancholy, like the Mexican girl he left in Salinas, due to his uncurable rootlessness.



All you need is love, and a little luck. My wife and I’s road life is coming to an end. Fatima may become a home to cobwebs soon, yet Kerouac, through this blog, through the dreams of countless restless adolescents, and not just in the U.S. but all over the world, and here I refer to the Italian translation of On the Road, Sulla Strada, which I’ve just bought while in the lovely village of Pergine and subsequently written a poem about, remains faithful throughout all time and space, remains as faithful as the notorious and beautiful run-on sentence art-form, known by some as the "spontaneous prose style", which he founded and which flows freely here in this story, remains faithful, as faithful as my intention to write this very story.


For the Love of the Road; a poem


Kerouac’s

On the Road’s

Anniversary

Is comin’ up

There’s a blog

That’s givin’ away

A $250 prize

To the winner of a short

Story contest-

The subject, its anniversary,

Kind of


I just bought

Sulla Strada

In a bookstore here in

an Italian village

Just after my wife and I 

Met with a midwife

This roadside afternoon


Now I think I’ll

Write a short about it

Along with this poem


I'm sure all starving, young writers

At one point or another

Gather in little, likely groups,

And read each other's works,

Thinking to themselves

"We were never going to make it."

September 04, 2021 20:03

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2 comments

15:29 Sep 11, 2021

There is so much to say. Are you talking about the new fee introduced or are you talking about Fatimah and your wife? The writing coincidences? Really? I enjoyed it a bit but then it got confusing, you know. Like there were so many things going on at the same time. My critique will be to stick with a single idea and then work your way around it. That way, it would keep your readers invested in the story and the characters.

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J. Storbakken
14:48 Sep 12, 2021

Much love for your critique. It is rather in line with most of the feedback I get. I am spontaneous and full of simplicity- which means I tend toward disorganized poetics. This may lead to frustration for the reader, something I must work on. Thanks very much!

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