Dust-Off Those Writing Hands

You are a normal person, and you want things to go your way. But Your world was honestly more dust than description yesterday, and you were concerned because you were certain that despite this preference you thought that was all there was. Today the world has a bit more in it. Roads that curve, and bumpy sidewalks, and a bus station.

You walk forwards, because before today, there was nothing actually in front of you, just like there's nothing real behind you, or really justified to suffer about. Though you believe that suffering is something you need to be made sense of now that you know the word.

You know how to buy a ticket, and so you do and you walk up to the first person you’ve ever met. In a way they are just as formless as you, but that's not for the lack of substance that your existence amounts to.

They are more than words, and they don’t need to be invented piece by piece like you do.

You sit next to them and wait.

And then you become impatient because they won’t look at you, and make you. You.

You honestly don’t know why they seem so lost in thought, nobody thought about who they were going to be. Not really. They had parents, who themselves had parents, but that’s not the same as it all being important. Intentional. Half the generations they both knew, were basically unchosen, self and passively selected before the distinction of humanity, and far after that the idea that a parent’s influence was anything but watching them work. This is the reality that you can not hope to mimic, and as deep as the words that make up your bones, you are certain.

The author is worried about how you, a half formed piece of an idea will be seen when you are fully written. Far away, when there is enough empty words to cut and mend into a reader ready coherence, this is what they’re scared of. Like your reception matters more than your conception, even knowing you are just unwritten words in their head.

“You know it doesn’t matter right?” and they look over, genreless like all real bodies. As easily romance as horror, and yet relatively irrelevant by description to anyone that wasn’t attempting to evoke anything in specific.

“I’m not even a first draft. I’m just. In your head.” and it was true, you aren’t real in any fashion. They don’t have a plan for you, but so far when they want to draw you you're pretty, and when they go to write you you’re meaner than they’re used to in real life.

That’s something you know about yourself now, and so you ask, “why do you think I’m like that?”

And they say nothing before saying, “Well, I don’t like excuses.”

You don’t really know what to say to this until you point out, “I’m not going to say I won’t use it like that at first, but you can’t really experiment with ideas you refuse to explore.”

“What do you mean?” your author asks.

“Just about any reason can be construed as an excuse for a behavior, but you can only really portray that folly if you work with why and when that self-perception is unfounded.” it was how arcs worked, you couldn’t see what wasn’t at all there.

“I still don’t want you to be like that.”

“You already write me like an asshole. I’m not nice, people might like that or not, but that's what you end up writing when you write me. But you aren’t finishing my story. You’ve barely even started and I’m already a silly unfounded argument to you.” You say, you don’t really have a role beyond that. Things have been written that are meant to be you, all together in a drab unofficial color, but that’s all you are right now.

“You're fictional, I can’t give you everything you want.”

“I want to be made. I want to be finished. I want you to figure out what you mean and not be so worried about ‘the wrong idea’.” Like people actually got the wrong idea, and not just the coherent implications of a given text. The common answers and the writers willingness to explore and or refute them.

“But people only really get the wrong idea from my work.”

“Then read more. If you haven’t noticed, you live in the real world. You can know about anything if you’re willing, and you can apply it to me.”

“But you’re not real.”

“So what? I’m fictional, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t applying real world concepts to me even now.” You point out, being only the words of a common language. “I mean, you probably think if you give me a tragic backstory some shitty kids will see it and my behavior and imagine their bullies or themselves that way to excuse their real life behavior right?”

“Yeah.”

“But you’ve also decided that I’m a certain age because of how I behave, in your head, or a certain sex because of how you feel about it. The reader has already decided I’m a guy probably, and you a woman because questioning sex-roles this much makes people immediately think ‘the writer has a pussy or wants one’.“ You say, certain that your author understands even if that distinction is a bit uncomfortable for them.

“Well that’s a bit complicated.” They say, because any other statement would be too opinionated on the topic.

“You're a writer, you're making shit up out of thin air and a memory for the language you're working in. Why would it be bad to use any of this shit even in the first draft?”

“Because the more I write the more goes wrong.”

“What do you even mean by that?”

“There wasn’t a bus station here last week. I wrote something. I wrote something for ‘out there’ and it changed that.” And you aren’t sure why that’s a problem.

“If you can do this then become a journalist! What the hell are you making shit like me up for?”

“I don’t write to change the world. I write to fit it!” They say, like the notion was actually all that sensible.

“That’s stupid!”

“How? Everyone wants to write a novel, and everyone who discusses it wants rep without depth for a reason.”

“Yeah, ‘cause bitching about stuff is easy ad-space. It doesn’t change what you want to write.”

“I’ve told you what I want to write.”

“No, you’ve told me about how piss-pants scared you are that complete strangers will judge your work in ways you didn’t intend. I’m barely more than this argument because you're so freaked out by the notion that people will emulate me like an 80’s cartoon.” You’ve never watched any of those, you're not even sure you're meant to be in a world built with that context, but you use it because it's there, not because you understand the reference but because your author does, and would dismiss the notion then as ‘petty’ and ‘censorship’ and ‘Darwin award behavior’ even if they do it themselves. “and you told me that you could change the world to the point of fixing mass transit in your area when you discuss it in a public format. An ability that is straight up magic." There is a pause after that and you think that your author is going to take your mind and your voice and say what they’d like you to say before you feel their pulling away.

You don’t know how to fix it, and even without the context of a past you kind of want to. You don’t have a mother, even if they made one for you. You won’t be finished anyway if they don’t work out their perspective. “I just don’t understand why you’d bother thinking about something that doesn’t get words down. You’ve thought more than twice about my gender, about how you like the idea that I don’t fit in some fashion. Being a mean guy is a bit shitty, and yeah, people hate vagina-havers that aren’t nice if they aren’t pepto-bismol white and skunky.” You say in permission. You don’t mind the suffering, in text or in a reader’s view if you get finished.

“You could cut the difference and make me butch, or you could just keep me the way I am. I just want to exist," And even if the author makes one for you, mother, father, sister, friends, you’ll never really have one. But you know that they won’t make anything if they're stuck in their head like this. "It seems like you aren’t finishing for reasons that realistically don’t matter at all.”

“I only thought about it.” They say, like they ever only think a little.

But it still makes you angry, “I don’t even have parents. You’ve got a freaking ‘placeholder’ in my word document. Nothing about that implies that I’ve got a specific set of junk. Am I really so mean that I don’t deserve context? It's not like I can really care what it is!”

“You’re just an antagonist!”

“You can’t even make up a different main character!” You point out, you know it’s true, because there’s nothing like that so far in your head, in the words that make you up ink or binary, there's nothing consistent about the other voice. The other perspective. “I just want to exist, and if you don’t care enough about the world to change it literally, then why does how everyone feels about you matter?”

“What?”

“You could fix everything. You could change everything. You don’t have to finish my arc. I’m okay with just being nonsense in your head. But I don’t get why it matters who I am to kids lurking erotic book-apps when you could fix everything else.”

“I shouldn’t get to pick and choose.” They say.

“Everyone does, the only difference with you is that you had the power and picked the bus instead of a fancy fucking boat!” You say, you aren’t written as a good person, but you know what makes one up. It's not this, but it's also not not this. “It's alright to be scared, but it's just plain cowardly to have that much power and then do nothing with it!”

“I can’t change how you’ll be seen though.”

“And I don’t care. I’m fictional, I can be written to have feelings, I can be written to express them, you can be competent or not in that effort, but I can’t care about it.” You say, then continue, “Even how other people feel about it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing lost for a shit opinion. People are allowed to hate my lack of guts!”

“But it’s never just you! Nobody just hates the character, they hate the story, they hate the writer. They say I’m ‘dead’ just to throw out my perspective!”

“And why am I supposed to care about that? I’m fictional! I am written to be a bad person! There’s barely anything else about me, and you’re being precious about how other people might ever, if you wrote regularly, see me?” You are suddenly very solid, and very annoyed, and then with that certainty, the same that allowed you to buy a ticket, you literally grab them and shake them by the shoulders.

And like that, their solidity is gone. And your Author, the real one appears in their place. Covered in that dust of nonexistence you were familiar with as only words. They aren’t surprised in the least, but for some reason you're certain now. They might not care about finishing you, but the bus is almost here, and you both need to go.

“You saved me.” she says, it’s more certain now. They’re all those things, but their body, their presence still lacks a genre for you. They’re your writer, you were never going to understand them. A human being is too limited, and limitless, even more so now you know what had covered her over.

She’s the closest thing to a mother you will ever really have, the person who put all your words in your mouth. The ones you use, the ones that describe you. The ones that if you’re ever finished will define interpretation as much as misinterpretation on the part of everyone who reads about you.

She’s right next to you, and unlike that thing that trapped her you know. The judgement doesn’t matter as much as you do to her. She still doesn’t know where someone like you would come from. And she thinks it’s silly to place it all in trauma, but she made this bus station to think about, to run to, and even if the block is gone that uncertainty still needs to be felt out.

She’ll make you suffer, just to make sense of you, but at least you’ll be done.

“I can’t finish you. You're real now. Outside of me. I can’t finish you anymore.” she says because she thinks there’s any real limits to her creativity. Like she can’t just remake you as many times as she likes.

“That’s stupid. If I’m real now, that just makes it non-fiction. So it’s alright.” You say, because that’s obvious. She made you, she made her block dusty and shakable, she made the bus station, she made herself in every sense beyond the flesh. And you're next to her because she needs you, and she can change everything with an asshole like you besides her.

“Alright. That’s a way to think about it I guess.” She says, as the bus rumbles on irregular road.

They look out at the road when it makes sense to, but the sheen off it makes things hard to distinguish, in a way that feels similar to nonexistence for you, but that’s because nonexistence still feels like something to you.

You remember not being. And-

“You’re gonna need to dust me off again, you know.” she says, like it’s all that much a chore.

“That’s alright.” You say, a loyal character where she’s not written yet.