Of Life

I have written a small piece.

It's awfully unpolished.

Not only that, it's in Swedish.

Fact is, I am slightly ashamed. It's not a real short story. It's, in fact, a school assignment.

I suppose you can see where this is going?

Now, don't get me wrong. I have always spent a lot of time and devotion to everything I do for educational purposes (at least, that is, if I believe in the importance of the assigment... which I usually do). Yet, fact is, that school assignments are typically pieces restricted by guidelines, by a rather short deadline, and by the mere fact that - gasp! - I'm a student.

While it is certainly true that we had a very loose leash on this one - "Write a short story, folks!" - and the deadline wasn't too bad, this whole school assignment thing gives off bad vibes.

And fact is, as I eye the text I wrote a few weeks ago, through five drafts and a little bit of external influence, I just swipe my screen with my finger and say to myself, "This. This I need to rewrite."

It's like that little snippet of text that appeared in my head during a rather dull train journey a few years back - "My notebook became my finest critic, for everything I wrote was disgusting."

Anyway, so this text. I called it "Raison d'Être" - excuse the French - "a reason to live", to put it bluntly. I'm not sure whether it was such a fitting title, but it sounds awfully nice, doesn't it? The story was a deeply metaphorical one - a genre I prefer, by far, at least in short stories - revolving around a young writer and his troubles.

While I certainly, in my eyes, did a decent job, I'm not satisfied by far. How could I be? The introduction was a shambles, a last-minute addition where the original paragraph simply did not fit in with the rest of the story. The story fluctuates between a very, extremely metaphorical perspective, and a far more concrete view. The change in the protagonist, nigh the entire idea and moral of the story, is lost in lacking emphasization.

Oh, and the "moral" of the story. This is the foremost eyesore. What am I trying to say? A short story without a point, without a driving idea, is nothing more than a fictitious article. Yet how could a young man, a student even, reflect upon life when he has had very little? How could I wish to convey wisdom, when it is unto me that wisdom shall be conveyed? Surely, whatever I write, whatever I say, is nothing but a mere reply, a copy of what has already been said? What tidbit, what advice I give is naught but the advice I have recieved myself, given unto me by someone who himself has attained experience. It's like an Amazon, forever living with naught but females, writing about relations with men, or Darwin writing his evolutionary thesis without looking unto small birds on distant islands. It's a scientist without his evidence, a journalist without his news - an author lacking a pen.

It strikes me that I lack a pen.