March 19th, 2018 - No More Maybe

Dear TNY,

I want to tell you my story of “No More Maybe.”

I started by highlighting the first three sentences of the story and leaving a comment (I copy every story so I can comment at will).  That comment said, “This had better not be third grade writing pushing an agenda story when I’m absolutely sure there are stories out there that have world class writing pushing the same agenda.”  Then I took a breath. I remembered I was supposed to remain calm. I thought about how, once, when I thought all in my life was lost, I happened upon some contentedness inside of a tattered dorm room with a few beers and a few strangers as I realized I was not alone in this world of passion for great writing.

Then I kept reading this story.

Here’s a thing I know you didn’t do, TNY.  It’s pretty basic. Maybe give it a try. You can press control/open-apple F.  Then type “!”. It will give you all the instances of “!” in this story.  That count? Thirty fucking eight. Do you know how many exclamation points should be in literature?  Zero. There are exceptions to this rule. 1. It is acceptable if the literature is Upton Sinclair’s Oil! (Do note that There Will Be Blood is a better title, but we will still accept the former).  2. It is acceptable to use an exclamation point or two if it is apparent to the reader that they are used for irony but only under the condition of sparingly (Small aside here:  Say, TNY, that you met a girl/guy. Said girl/guy, let’s call her/him Randy, is at the bar when you roll up to order your White Russian. Just kidding.  You’d never order a White Russian as you are so post-Lebowski.  You’d order a fucking Stella. Anywho, Randy is talking to a short, bald man with a push-broom moustache and one lone gold hoop in his ear.  You take note of him, not her, because he is an oddball motherfucker.  So you order your Stella and, while you are waiting, Push-Broom totters off to the facilities and Randy swings your way. She/he has eyes that are pleasing. Her/his smell is delicious. And as happens with us meat species, you find yourself trying to fit each other into your mouths by night’s end.  Now if that happens once or twice it can *possibly* be considered serious-casual because you are taking a swing at things. A few more times it then becomes just casual because you're already exploring other options, but you keep each other around for sex. But after 38 times, it is no longer casual.  This is when you find yourself in a relationship with Randy and you may not even know when you got there. Push-Broom is over often, eating cold cuts and laughing with Randy about Presidential tweets, non-ironically (more in a "Look at him tell the world" way), and you think to yourself, “There may just be enough Ambien in the medicine cabinet to fix this.” But when you check, alas, Randy has been splitting them with Push-Broom for ages.)

I forgot where I was going with that aside.  

So, um, I stopped reading this story at (my) page four because there is a whole world of things happening out there today.  In reality. And they could be exceptional or they could be absolutely terrible.  At page four I was willing to gamble that anything that could happen in the real world would be better than wasting my time on the rest of this story.  And that's an abysmal thought considering you purport to publish "art."

Yours in admiration for exceptional writing (just, you know, I have standards that I try to keep),

Nick