The Writer Read Free Page A

open a door with little green men behind it – the
portal to one’s life quest.
    We made our way to my
place, my very small unfashionable apartment. I politely asked her
to wait at the door, while I ran around inside like a maniac
picking up rubbish from the floor.
    Moments later, she made
her way to my desk, which was in perfect order. I stood proudly
next to it.
    “How do you do it?” she
asked, apparently shocked at the neatness of it.
    “I never let it get out of
hand in the first place” I began.
    “No, I mean, how can you
create in such a constricted atmosphere,” she asked, positively
perplexed. “Passion is Chaos! When you’re burning with ideas and
are jotting them all down, where do you put all those papers? Or do
you just write like a speedy robot on your laptop?”
    “Oh. I write on papers
sometimes. I just organize them here in my folders.” I opened a
desk drawer to show her.
    Nice and neat little
pieces of papers were stacked sideways in their own little story
folder compartments.
    “If I don’t organize my
papers, I won’t ever find them again. I write my thoughts whenever
they come to me, hence the paper napkins you see in
there…”
    “ I see…” she
said.
    We both stared at each
other for a moment. I went to shower, while she read bits and
pieces of my notes.
    “I can’t believe how
perfect your sentences are…,” she shouted across the
house.
    “Thanks” I replied from
the bathroom, where I was finishing getting dressed.
    “Seriously,” she said, “it
feels like you looked up every single word in a Thesaurus,” she
laughed.
    There is nothing wrong
with being concise.
    “You have lots of good
ideas… Have you started on any of the stories themselves
yet?”
    I walked into the room,
where she was just sitting cross-legged on the floor now,
surrounded by my stories.
    “No, not really…” I
replied.
    “When did you start this
specific project?” she asked, pointing to one of the
folders.
    “A while ago,” I said. The
heat of the spotlight beaming down on me was getting me
uncomfortable.
    Silence crept between
us.
    “You take everything so
seriously. Art is meant to be fun… Writing, painting,
Romance…”
    I laughed. “Romance is Art
now?”
    “It can be…”
    We looked at each other
for a while, saying nothing.

Chapter 6
    When reality bites, it
takes a whole chunk out of you. As I sat there, watching the
lecturer’s monkey walking up and down the aisle, I knew I was in
trouble. Looking over the exam I was about to hand back, I knew
reality would come crashing down on me soon enough.
    I had not been in school
for weeks. Professors were probably thinking I had joined the
circus by now, considering the quality of the disappearance act I
was presenting them with. I did feel quite sorry for the people
that kept being paired up with me. The last person I had to fill
out an assignment with actually told me she would write it all
herself. She preferred the extra work to the stress of wondering if
I would submit my share of the work on time. I could not really
blame her.
    That being said, I managed
to survive my semester, even pass my courses. By summertime, I was
on a high. Of course, you would probably not notice it, but inside
I was floating on a cloud.
    Joy decided that we needed
to travel and explore the world, get some real inspirational
creative juices that only came through experience: in other words,
backpacking.
    “How on earth will we be
able to afford that?” I asked.
    “We’ll just get jobs… work
anywhere and everywhere we can!” her eyes lit up as she started
envisioning our trip.
    “How are we going to
afford our plane tickets? Where do you want to go anyway? Where
would we actually stay?”
    “Calm down, half the fun
is in the spontaneity, the freedom to go and do whatever we want,
whenever we want to. Just see it: the open road, the Open Space,
just you and me, the fresh air and our Art.”
    I felt a surge of
panic.
    “What’s wrong?” she