I sat in front of the dusty bookshelf. The faded and chipped pink paint stared back at me in the dark room. The shelf was filled to the brim with books that occupied my childhood memories. My fingers brushed along the thin spines of the books, until they curled around the spine of an all too familiar title. I gently pulled it off of the shelf and wiped the dust off of the cover with my sleeve. Nostalgia punched my stomach as I opened the book and began to peer at the illustrations, including one of a pink monster stomping through a forest with a sly grin on its face.
The simple little picture book reminded me of my childhood and everything I have lost. It reminded me of back when I was convinced that magic was real. When I knew that if I believed hard enough, I could find a unicorn and bring it home as a pet. Every swamp had a witch living in a dusty old cottage, brewing potions in dark cauldrons each full moon. Mermaids inhabited every ocean and had large coral castles filled with magical pearls that could grant wishes. Additionally, I thought that the world was full of opportunities and possibilities for everyone. Barbie told me that I could do anything or be anyone. Now I’m not so naive, I know that those things aren’t real. I have been exposed to the cruel truth of this world, and that truth is that those opportunities only exist for those with money. Not for people like me. Not for average people who have dreams as big as the world. No, only individuals with copious amounts of money are able to follow their dreams.
I know deep down, in the darkest pit of my soul that I’ll have to abandon my dreams if I want to survive in this world. If I want to be able to eat, I will have to set down my notebook filled with pages upon pages of ideas and go work in a cubicle owned by a rich CEO that doesn’t understand what it’s like to need words to live. The words that make me feel alive have no meaning to those people.
To them, creativity is something that is only important when you are a little child. But once you get older, creativity is no longer valued. The world praises robotic writing that lacks depth and a soul. Perfectly polished pieces written by artificial intelligence that do not understand the human experience are becoming more loved than ones written by real people who have been through hard times and came out of them with a written story. But yet, creativity is what makes us all human. The arts are what give us our reason to live, yet we set all our artists up for failure by forcing them to abandon their dreams and leave their characters to die in a notebook that will never become a published novel. My characters will die in my notebooks and never get to be displayed on a glossy cover placed on display tables at Barnes & Nobles.
I wonder how many people exist that are like me. That long to create, long to paint their imagination or breathe life into words. The people whose hands itch to make and create instead of consume. The people who have dreams like mine.
I will have to abandon my dreams, stuff them into an old cardboard box that will grow dust in the back of my closet instead of being shared with the world. Instead of touring the world and sharing my writing with people that might connect with it, I will occupy a gray office desk and type emails instead of stories. In this world, you either survive or you live.
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Canary word: Present
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I like the beginning of your story a lot. The flow of your sentences is working very well for me and I feel like the descriptions are on point.
That’s a good follow up for that sentence!
Small tip: I stumbled over the repetition of “spine” here, maybe think of rephrasing this? “the thin spines of the books, until they curled around the spine”
As for this sentence: “The simple little picture book reminded me of my childhood “ I also feel that it’s superfluous since you mentioned that the narrator is occupied with childhood memories and already got a punch from nostalgia when opening it. So this is just overdoing it at that point 😊
“and everything I have lost” Oh.
I really like this entire paragraph. I like the reminiscing and the harsh reality, very well done!!
Ohh I like the phrasing of “needing words to live”!
And yes. Oh I feel this sentiment so much!
I really hope that this captures only the frustrations of living in a world where AI is praised for its story-writing potential and not showing too much of yourself and how you’ve given up on your characters. Never give up your dreams, even if you write them only for yourself :3
Hiya, great work! firstly, the words you use to describe child-like imagination in paragraph 2 are very vivid. you did very well painting a picture of an unimaginably large, colourful world, waiting to be explored. when this bright, hopeful view clashes with the later written sad, dark, dull reality of most adults, working in cubicles, it helps the reader understand, as well as feel, the disappointment that is given to us, especially at our age of 14-18, while we make the difficult transition from a bright, magical world, to the blunt, grey reality. It also invokes the question in the reader, "Why do they encourage such creativity, just to shut it down later?", which I assume was one of your goals with this. all in all, great work! Keep writing!