Bereft - July 26, 2012

[note: this was written during a writing exercise: we had 20 minutes to write something inspired by the word "bereft". This is the result, unedited, exactly as it appeared when time ran out. You can read all of them in the waves category]]

Bereft- Squiddy Geiger - July 26, 2012

"It was the bereft of times, it was the worst of times. The bereft things in life are free. A Bereft History of Time." Joe put down the pen, and sighed, then laughed sourly. The jokes were wearing thin; they weren't pushing back the despair quite so well anymore.

He'd tried, he really had. Years of writing, pouring his soul into the work, creating grand symphonies of imagination. Designing worlds, filling them with all manner of wondrous beings, and for what?

He picked up an envelope and pulled the letter out. He had not expected this, after months of rewrites working with his editor. "We regret to inform you that the project has been canceled. We feel your work is just not unique enough to sell."

Not unique enough? Sure there were similarities to any number of other works, but you couldn't find any book out there written in the past few years, in the Fantasy genre, that didn't bear some resemblance to other works!

The words had left him shaken, unable to think. He had drunk his entire liquor cabinet whilst watching bad television reruns on the oldies channels. Not that he remembered any of them. When he'd run out of booze, he'd continued to wallow. It felt good in a shitty kind of way, so he kept at it.

He returned to the page he'd been filling, nearly full of bastardized sayings. He started writing. "Mother knows bereft. Father knows bereft. Bereft friends. Bereft man. Some things are bereft left unsaid."

Posted by Squiddy at July 26, 2012 08:45 PM | TrackBack