It’s hard to say how it all began; it’s even harder to say when. Besides, people don’t really go around admitting that they’re obsessed with something. It’s all a complicated chain of events that stem from one thing or another. A relentless pursuit, a maniacal drive and the next thing you know, you’re too far in it, and there’s no turning back.
“This is so not working… I don’t even know what I’m doing.” Mark muttered to himself as he stared at the words that flickered across the screen of his battered old computer.
Writing something of novel length was never his forte. He preferred short, smart sentences that could pack a punch and hit the readers with awe. Too bad it only lasted for two months. Then he had to resort to something else, much more subdued, but nevertheless still short enough for him to finish it in one go. He started writing for children, after obtaining a part time stint writing about the adventures of Peter and Molly, two 7 year olds running around their neighbourhood and solving mysteries of missing pets and scary creatures who ate children for lunch.
At that moment, he regretted his decision to join Word Hunt, a recent competition for budding writers where they slaved over their manuscripts for hours on end to achieve the minimum word limit of 70,000 in 50 days.
It was a secret project though… failing to achieve would have been a personal defeat and he didn’t want anyone to know about it until he was sure that he’d be able to pull this off.
“Dude, whaddya doin’, man?”
Mark instantly minimised his window and tried to smile at his housemate, Luke.
Luke had a beautiful set of teeth, which was a positive attribute for his chosen career path. He was a theatre actor, out of the job most of the time, but he still found happiness in bugging his friend’s life.
“Nothing”
“Dude, your screen’s blank”
“Huh?”
“Your screen’s blank. Are ya deaf or what?”
Luke grabs a chair and drops himself beside Mark. He starts playing with the wires that were there.
Mark lets out a barely audible sigh but remains silent. Luke looks at him.
“Well, you’re alive… but with this kind of silence you’re giving me the creeps, dude” Luke added, somewhat mysteriously.
“Yeah, I’m alive… See…”
“You know, if I came in here and found you dead on this chair staring at your computer…”
“Look Luke, don’t be silly!” Mark interrupted.
“You interrupted my flow of thought… anyway, as I was saying, if I found you dead here I’d say that you were having an affair with the computer and your chick came in here, saw the act and murdered you.”
"Luke, you know I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“But someday you will…”
“Huh! Which season are you in now? You’re obsessed with that murder investigation show you know… You’ve been talking about murders and investigations and stuff like that since forever.”
Mark wondered how on earth Luke’s mom could give a boxed DVD set of all the show’s seasons for his birthday.
“Oh, come on, dude. You’re the one who’s obsessed… with the word obsessed.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve been muttering it to yourself the past couple of days. Something’s wrong, man. Anyway, nice screensaver you’ve got there” Luke said and bounded off his chair and out of the door sleek as a cat.
Luke turned to face his computer again, making a mental note to change the screensaver to start 3 seconds after being idle…or less if that was an option, 1 second, perhaps… having someone look at your blank screen and comment on it is not something he would look forward to again.
He stared at the screen, taking in the words he had written one by one, trying to see where he could improve it. Writing for children, he noticed, didn’t involve this much rumination.
He could opt to write a novel for children, though… just throw in dragons, or a princess. The kids would love it. But he didn’t want to write for others, not this time anyway… though he still continued thinking about dragons and princesses all the same. A dragon princess, or prince, something to think about….
He kind of changed his mind later… he needed to make it real, he thought. The main character was supposed to be a guy, like him… but he was worried that he might just end up making the character a part of himself, maybe a handsomer, taller, and much more talented and confident version of him. That didn’t sound too bad. Except that it didn’t help his self esteem.
He wondered if he was obsessed about anything. It was hard to come up with possibilities of obsession. Maybe it was writing… he had no idea.
He figured that he needed to think his plot over… obsession was an idea, expanding the plot to engage the interest of the reader was something else altogether. Finally, he decides that sitting in front of the computer and tapping the table was not going to help him, and leaves to look for Luke.
Mark walked into the darkened room where Luke was standing against a wall, reading a manuscript, and looking worriedly across the room from time to time. Now was not a good time to interrupt Luke, but that wasn’t Mark’s intention. He came over to give Luke some moral support for his attempt to get a role as an annoying pain in the ass young executive. Secretly, Mark thought that the role would fit Luke like a glove. Luke could be an annoying pain in the ass. And he was quite young. He would be 23 in June.
Luke caught Mark’s eye and gave a small wave.
Some of the others turned around to look at Mark. Slightly tall and gangly, Mark had a crooked nose, which some people said looked like a certain actor’s nose, and people often mistook him for an actor whenever he came to Luke’s auditions.
Through an unfortunate series of events, Mark was rather shy, and would rather have a dozen bricks fall on his leg than act in front of critical audiences. He rather felt that his arms and legs were too long and they kept flailing about and hitting other people when he actually tried to interact with others.
A pint sized lady with triangle shaped glasses and a pair of dangling earrings stood up and rapped her clipboard with the pen. Her voice projected from her corner in crisp, clean lines… from what she was saying, Mark assumed she was the casting director.
The actors started moving to the seats in front, and a few dodgy looking men sat on the chairs at the back. The big yellow chair in the middle of the table had the word DIRECTOR emblazoned at the back of it in big bold letters.
Mark observed as the young actors began performing the script. Most of them hardly looked at it, and acted as though they were having a casual conversation with their neighbours.
Young exec: I’m here to officially bug your life
Female colleague: Gee, that’s great! (Rolls eyes)
Young exec: Awesome… you’re the first person that thinks me bugging them is great. You’re an amazing colleague, you know.
Female colleague: Yeah, I found that out a long time ago. Anyway, I see Meg’s free at the moment. Stop by her place will ya? She looks likes she needs some cheering up.
Young exec: (In low whispers) I can’t.
Female colleague: (Whispering also) Why not?
Young exec: (Runs fingers through his hair) I think she has the hots for me.
Female colleague: She’s old enough to be your mother!
Young exec: Nope. I did the math. My mom would have had to have me when she was 15 if she were the same age as Meg. And if you take into account my good old sis, who’s like 5 years older than me, then she would have been 10 when she first gave birth. Freaky!
The script wasn’t much to go by… the conversation between the characters lacked depth. It was meant to be that way. In fact it was almost straightforward, unlike other stage performances. The only thing that mattered most was the body language, as well as the way the actors projected themselves and took on the role. The role had to be taken by a true actor. At least, that’s what the lady with the clipboard said, after calling all the actors forward.
Mark walked out of the theatre alone, his hands in his pockets due to the cold. His hands and feet were always cold. Luke apparently stayed behind to chat up with some chick who was auditioning for the female colleague part, occasionally flashing those beautiful teeth as he played the part of the suave guy to perfection.
Mark decided to name his main character Duncan. It was an interesting name, and he didn’t know anyone who went by that name personally. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even know anyone whose name started with the alphabet D with the exception of Derek, a childhood friend. And Derek was dead.
“Duncan had an obsession no one knew about. It grabbed him by the collar, forcing him to obey it’s every whim and fancy. The search for the dragon, once assumed to be a dinosaur increased Duncan’s status in the eyes of other palaeontologists. His obsession for the search of the mystical dragon was often mistaken for passion and enthusiasm. The search drove him crazy, especially whenever the team was close to a discovery but the evidence was just not enough.
Oftentimes, he would go to the site late at night with a sketchpad in hand, conjuring images of dragons with long snouts, or with spikes across their tails… flying in the mountains, or crawling stealthily in the mangrove swamps.
Then he would trudge back to the camp in the early hours and yell for his team to get an extra early start. He was clearly obsessed.”
Mark read the paragraph again. It didn’t sound too bad… at least there was something to build on. It looked much better than his opening sentence. Perhaps he’d go back and change it when he’s done.
He wondered what would happen if he changed Duncan to a girl. An obsessed female palaeontologist sounds much more enticing. He decided to call his sister and ask her what kind of things would have crossed her mind if she was a 25 year old female palaeontologist. Even if her answer would most probably be inapplicable, her reaction would be worth the trouble.
He realised 2 things though… the first thing is that dragons don’t necessarily belong in children’s stories. In fact they don’t belong anywhere. Anything that big would have never let anything else live. He shuddered slightly as he recalled a movie a watched a few years ago, where the earth was attacked by dragons. Another thing he noticed is that he is obsessed with the word obsessed. Luke was right!
0 comments:
Post a Comment