Member-only story
The Creative
A Very Short Dialogue of Woe
“No ideas?”
“Oh,” he thumbed his mug handle, “I have ideas.”
“Well, then. There you go. Write them.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because. What’s the point?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said, “what’s the point? I start writing a paragraph, or I imagine a scene, and I just stop. I think, ‘Why bother?’”
“Doug, you’ve written ninety-seven stories and a novel.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Why did you bother with those?” she said.
“That was different.”
“Why?”
“I was doing it for fun.”
“It’s not fun, now?”
“I’m forty,” he said.
“Writing isn’t fun after forty?” She blew on her coffee. “Shit.”
“I can’t keep fucking around. I want it to be real. I need to make some money. I want to make some money.”
“So sell some writing.”
“I don’t know what they want. I’ve written ninety-seven stories and a novel and I’ve made seventy-five bucks. And eighty cents.”
