Evening squires.
Despite a massive reading list and several assignments due in the next few weeks, I managed to take a night off and finally do some writing. This is a very rough draft that will be rewritten at some point, but I just wanted to show it off (since I very rarely get a chance to do so lately) and see what y'all think. Here is an excerpt from the outline I wrote, which I think is vital in understand exactly what it is I'm doing with this story. So here you go:
Prose-ac (working title) is the story of Miles and Zoe, although it isn’t the same story. The part that concerns Miles is told through his own journal entries, as he struggles as a novelist who has come to hate everything he writes, while the part that concerns Zoe is an account of her life after leaving Miles to play in an orchestra in Melbourne. However, it is not really what happens after she leaves him, but is in fact the story that Miles tells himself to feel better about being alone. Outside of the writing that has seen him receive a certain amount of acclaim in the literary world, Miles keeps a secret work that is a conscious delusion of what he imagines Zoe’s life is like without him. In it, she has wonderful experiences, but at the end of it all she keeps winding up just as sad as he is, and this is the best way Miles has of dealing with the loss of the most important person in his life. (Thus the title: prose is like a medication for him.)
So without further adieu, here is chapter one. Enjoy.
______________________________________________________
Zoe connected her iPhone to the USB port on her laptop, and watched the only memento she had of Miles be erased. Before she left, Miles had made her a playlist for the drive from Perth to Melbourne, and now as she synced her own music back onto the portable device, it felt like setting fire to a mix tape from a long lost love.
But that was the point. It would have been easier if it were a mix tape. A tape could be stored away, in a box in the back of a cupboard like a memory. You can’t carry something like that around with you every day, and you certainly can’t listen to it very often. This is why Zoe had to erase it, because the only other solution was to put her iPhone away, and that simply wasn’t going to happen.
Such is love in the digital age.
Her new apartment was largely empty. She sat on the floor with her laptop plugged into the wall and a bottle of Southern Comfort next to her. She had only just arrived, so there was no furniture. She would sleep on the floor tonight and go out to buy a bed tomorrow morning. After that she would slowly fill the place with all those other things an apartment needed. A television, a DVD player, a couch, a stereo, a desk, bookshelves, CD racks, a microwave, a refrigerator and some art to hang on the walls would all need to come soon. For now she only had her computer, her cello, a bottle of Southern Comfort, a box of clothes, sheets, blankets and pillows, a box of CDs, DVDs and books and another box she had labelled ‘MISC.’ That was her life, packed up with surprising ease into three boxes and a cello case.
Her iPhone finished syncing. The change had been made from Miles’ audio love letter to her own eclectic pop-culture representation of herself. It had been a wonderful playlist that Miles made. He stole her iPhone the day before she left and stayed up all night crafting list of songs for her journey. He had made her promise to start at the beginning and not skip a single song, and so she did. The effect was amazing. Either through simple coincidence or, more likely, Miles’ crafty thoughtfulness, the progression of sounds throughout the journey reflected the journey itself. The first song was probably just to get it out of the way and explain as bluntly as he could how he was feeling. Flame Trees by Cold Chisel was the first song to play in her car, and even though Miles always claimed to hate Cold Chisel for the ‘sing-along tyranny’ (so he put it) they have over the Australian people, he had been drowning himself in that one song ever since it became obvious that Zoe had to leave. Zoe’s feelings had been the opposite in the build-up to her exodus. Things had been the same for so long that she didn’t know how to feel different about things. She had given hollow goodbyes that often ended in “I’ll be seeing you,” and the last steps she shared with the city of Perth had been just like every step before that. Of course, that was up until the chorus of that first song on the playlist. That’s when it hit her, with all the force that only a rock-and-roll ballad can deliver. She cried for three songs, until Bob Marley came on, which she suspected was put there by Miles in expectation of her crying.
The first part of the playlist, which she listening to while driving through the suburbs of Perth and on the freeway, were powerful and emotional songs that everyone feels they can relate to, despite never having any of those feelings. But as the suburbs gave way to the highways and the country, the songs grew simpler and more honest. Most were acoustic guitar and did not have the sleek veneer of high production values. You could hear the little mistakes the guitarists made, singers trying hard to get the right note but not quite getting there and background noises from creaky studios. Whether the change was intentional or not, Miles was the singer who couldn’t always get the note he wanted, but meant every word he sang.
She took a swig from the bottle, let out a groan of tolerable disgust and stood up from the floor. She supposed she’d never get to see her place like this again, so she walked around looking at it in more detail. It was an old building in Kew, which is what attracted her to it in the first place. The floors were wooden and the ceilings were high. The front door opened into a hallway, to the right of which was the kitchen, and to the left was the living room where she was going to sleep tonight, the bathroom and the two bedrooms. She’d move into one of the bedrooms when there was a bed to help live up to the name, but for now she’d stay in the spacious living room.
She had big plans for what she was going to do with the place. The whole point of moving was for a big change, and she’d start with her apartment. The walls will be painted dark red and some sections of the wooden floors will be covered with rugs of mismatched colours. She’ll turn the spare bedroom into a music space, cover the walls with posters and maybe buy some new instruments. Now that she was a full-time musician with Orchestra Victoria, she had a lot more spare time than she used to, working full-time as a receptionist at a law firm and trying to fit music in around that. Now music was all she had to do, which left a lot of space to try new things. Perhaps she’d finally start writing and recording her own stuff. Perhaps she’d learn the piano, and do some of her own vocals for a change. The possibilities made her very excited now as she stood in the doorway of that empty bedroom, but at the same time she wondered why it had taken her so long to open up to possibilities.
It wasn’t a lack of time or inspiration. It wasn’t the fact that she never had her own space to create. It wasn’t the fact that her musical energy had to be directed to other, less personal projects. She blamed Miles for some of it. Over time she had started to resent him and his endless cycle of inertia. All he ever did was stare at blank pages and get frustrated when he managed to write something. She loved him dearly, but his inability to do new things managed to seep into her own life, until she had no desire to do anything but work and spend time with Miles. She asked him to come with her when she left, but he wouldn’t. He said it wasn’t about being afraid of change, but she knew that was the heart of it.
So now she had taken the great leap. The 2730 kilometres leap. And you can’t go that far without shaking off some of the bad things you lived with back home. Zoe decided that since it was one week until she started with the Orchestra, and she had saved up a sufficient amount of money to furnish her new place with some left over, she could do anything she wanted. Absolutely anything.
She walked back to the living room, sat down on the floor in front of her computer, and with a large swig from the bottle of SoCo, opened a new Word document. She was going to write a list of things she wanted to do but never did for one reason or another. The first one came quickly, because she though of it so many time before: learn to bake. Cakes, biscuits, muffins, anything. Under the goal she thought she’d write down some steps she could take toward the goal. The obvious one was to buy a recipe book and then head to the supermarket. It was so simple, but it filled her with joy at the thought of it. She’d start small with something easy, and then as she got better she’d try more exotic things.
She didn’t have any more pre-prepared goals, so she thought for a moment. Most people would resort to things like “go skydiving” or “see Paris” but those sorts of things didn’t interest her. She wanted something empowering, something to make her a slightly better person. Briefly she toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo, but it sounded more appealing than it actually was. After a while the obvious goal of “write some new songs” came to her. She had thought it too obvious to put on the list, but anything to make it more substantial would do. Then when it came to thinking of some steps to take toward it, she didn’t know how that would go. “Set up music room” came to her, and that was an integral part of the process, but beyond that she was lost. After a while she came out with “buy a keyboard” and “buy some recording software” which satiated her for the time being. She would find a music store tomorrow in the city and hopefully sort those things out.
By now the bottle was close to half-empty and each mouthful was harder than the last, but she kept at it despite the taste. Going down to the petrol station on the corner and buying some Coke to mix with started seeming more and more like a good idea, but it was too far to walk and she was busy plotting out her new life. Her wandering mind was taken by the thought of what else she could put in her music room. She had an idea to paint a large bass clef on one wall and a treble clef on the opposite wall, so she wrote it down, in case it sounded ridiculous by the morning. The room also needed a couch or at least a chair to sit on, so she wrote that down (it came under furniture, so it didn’t feel like being excessive in her spending). She was almost tempted to buy a drum kit as well, but that would have to come much later, if at all.
“Read The Brothers Karamazov” found its way onto the list. This was Miles’ influence, since he was a huge fan of Dostoyevsky. He talked about that book so highly, but she never got around to reading it.
“Try sushi” was another thing she had never done.
“Find a good restaurant” and “buy a wireless modem” signalled the end of her list, since she was now going from things she could do to things she had to do. She saved the document, hoping that more things would come to her in the coming days.
Feeling hungry, and like she definitely needed something to dilute the SoCo, she unplugged her iPhone and called Pizza Hut. They put her through to the closest store and she ordered a large pepperoni pizza and a bottle of Coke. She wouldn’t eat it all, but she liked cold pizza for breakfast. She gave the address, and they said it would be there in thirty minutes.
It was 9:15 and the alcohol was starting to take away some of her control over her emotions. Feeling very human, she decided she just wanted to feel anything that would come out. Clicking on iTunes, she looked for a song to raise her bottle and get emotional to. It had to be honest, genuine and something she could sing along to. Classical music was her first love, but it has obvious deficiencies when you’re feeling this way. Placebo came to mind, as it always does at moments such as these. Peeping Tom was her choice, so she double-clicked, turned up the volume and took another sip from the bottle. The small speakers on her laptop didn’t make for very good sound quality at that volume, but her blurred senses didn’t make for very good reception either.
The face that fills the hole,
that stole my broken soul.
The one that makes me seem to feel much taller than you are.
She felt like those lyrics were hers at that moment. The tears came like rain during a draught – refreshing and desperately needed. She hoped the same feeling had hit Miles in some way too. His moment would probably come at about the same level of intoxication, and with some song they both loved playing on the stereo in his ‘office’ (so he called it). She hoped he would suffer, but it would be that sort of poetic suffering that artists use to create wonderful things. He needed something like this to keep him from writing science fiction, which he always said he would do when he had more ideas than feelings (of course he always said there was little danger of that, since he had very few ideas.)
The pizza arrived a few songs later. Zoe answered the door with tears in her eyes, but still smiled at the delivery boy. “Are you okay?” the boy asked, almost like he cared.
“Yeah, it’s fine. How much do I owe you?”
“$14.95,” he said.
She gave him a twenty and told him to keep the change.
The pizza was surprisingly good, and the mix of Southern Comfort and Coke was a welcome change from the burning sensation of drinking it straight. And if nothing else, sitting on her new floor eating pizza and listening to Radiohead 2730 kilometres from everyone she knew is an experience she would never forget. The details toward the end of the night would be become blurry, particularly the reasoning behind dancing as best she could to Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner, but she when she awoke the next morning she felt cleansed and ready to adjust to life in Melbourne. Just as soon as the hangover wore off.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,018 Literary Works • 672,855 Reviews
Hi Imp (can I call you that?), nice to meet you *waves*
. In my search for something to critique, I glanced over this, which was looking a little lonely, and also, after having read the little intro you did, sounds very interesting - something I just had to read!! So here I am desperate to start reading this... But before I do I'll let you know a bit more about my crit style: First off I'm going to read and comment on your entire piece - all my [comments] will be in bold and [], my edits will just be in bold, however I don't do many edits (save spelling and grammar mistakes) like re-writing a whole sentence that I think sounds awkward, I just provide you with prompts and thoughts, so it will help you improve (well, that's my theory anyway 
hehe). Then at the end, I'll go through the review with you and ways you can improve, etc. Well, let's do this thing!! =D
Last Minute Views
Your MC
I think that this was your biggest downfall in this chapter, I don't want to sound mean (and just shout at me if I do =D ), but I couldn't quite see who your MC was. I know this is only the first chapter, but I would still like to get a few first impressions of her, and at the moment I've got nothing. But never fear!! All you need to do is add in more of those (nuisance) thoughts and feelings and you'll be away!! Simple, but a pain
Overall Thoughts
That's it!! I couldn't find any other major problems, so well done on a great piece, and if you just brush up on your MC's thoughts and feelings, and the other points I pointed out to you, you'll be well away!!
Keep writing and good luck with this great storyline!!!
--Lucyy xx