“Exploring life through fiction, together.”

In On Writing, Stephen King postulates that we don’t invent stories, we discover them. Writers grope around in the darkness until they find a lump that could be a bone, then follow tibia to femur to pelvis until they’ve unveiled the entire skeleton. They put in hard effort excavating the story, and should be rewarded for it, but it existed before they pulled it into public view.

Fiction Bite - She smiled in life, but not this time

Everything is a remake in the end, I used to tell her. These atoms in my hand weren’t always mine. Maybe one was a brontosaurus, another could have been in Hitler’s moustache. And this paint that I scrape and spread over the bone white canvas? Once a near-human spread it on a cave wall, a rock that fell and was swallowed back into the meld. That became ochre squeezed out of an aluminium tube. That became her face. So I’ve painted her before, like she was in life with a smile and warmth that emanates from the canvas.

But everything is a remake in the end.

And there’s beauty in that.

Quote of the Week

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any,”  — Alice Walker

Book of the month

Can’t Hurt Me Now by David Goggins

I found this book both inspirational and troubling. You journey alongside him from a horrific childhood to extreme physical competitions that get ever more torturous.

He does an amazing job of challenging you to leave your comfort zone and unleash your true potential. I loved the exercises at the end of each chapter, and how they, and the narrative, slowly unfolded over the course of the book.

And, I wonder at what point are you picking the hardest path by default, even when it’s no longer serving you?

Either way, it gave me a much needed kick up the backside. And there’s a clean version if you’d rather avoid the heavy swearing.

Final Words

If stories already exist, waiting to be found, what about your future self? Is a version of you out there somewhere, loitering for the right time to invade your consciousness? Or are you gradually crafting your new self, sentence by sentence, as you write the story of your life?

Do you want your fate to be predetermined and out of your hands? Or would you rather be on the hook and culpable for where you end up? Would you be willing to hit reply? It’d make my day to hear from you.

With Love,

Josiah

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