nixsight

The two “Life Isn’t A Box Of Chocolates, It’s A Rucksack Full Of Shit” pieces are the first of a new category I’m starting, called Broken Narratives. This category is going to be reserved for pieces of writing that I’ve unearthed that, for some reason, I don’t think I’m ever going to finish, but can’t find it in my heart to discard.

I’ve normally got a pretty good memory for what I intended with a piece of writing, or I get it done in one sitting, so more often than not, I can finish a piece, even months after starting it. But sometimes, I’ve just lost the thread of what I was intending to do. This sucks badly enough, but if I’m actually quite pleased with the work that’s left behind, it’s even worse. Those pieces, the ones that I’m almost proud of, but just not capable of finishing, will come under Broken Narratives.

I’m hoping not to put many posts up under this category.

“Life Isn’t A Box Of Chocolates etc” wasn’t ever intended to be the title of this piece… It was just going to be a meandering journey through a city at night, similar to a piece I did for my old column at Themestream (which got me thumped by a girl, and I may put up here at some point, as it’s a bit lovely), and the focal point of the piece was the rising storm, rather than any one of the characters in it. The title I’ve used here was just a line that I found at the end of the unfinished draft, and I have no idea what it was going to refer to.

But the first part, about the girl who has a hospital in her past, stands alone, I think, and the conversation in the second part is so similar to one that actually happened to me as being noteworthy. I should mention that I wasn’t trying to say anything specific about abortion or teen-pregnancy here; in fact, I think I was attempting to take a believable, measured look at one girl’s life. I always remember an article by Stephen King in which he says that “Carrie” was as much an effort in seeing whether he could get to grips with writing a pubescent girl’s life experience, much to the (slightly sadistic) amusement of his wife. I may have been trying the same thing here.

This was only written a few months ago, but my life now is so completely different to how it was then that I’m struggling to remember exactly what I was getting at. But I loved some of the turns of phrase I managed to find, and I hope you do too.