Writers... help! I can't finish the story!

[Number57]

I've had this story worked out in my mind for going on twenty years. 1989. But now... I am stuck. I started a book based on it, but I'm no writer, obviously. I constantly re-read and edit, and re-read and edit more.

Probably because I've posted part of the story on sites that critique writing.

Anyway. I've hit a wall. A large brick wall. I've since stopped editing my own stuff, but try as I might, I can't write another chapter that I'm okay with. How do you, in your experience, get past it? I'll appreciate any help anyone can offer.

[Loud Mime]

...suddenly everybody was run over by a truck..

for those of you who do not recall the article from the original National Lampoon.....here it is:

http://www.blueroses.com/2001_04/hwrite.html

[Chena]

Yep, that's another guy that loves my "call". Unfortunately for him, he ended up in my freezer last year and is even on the menu this weekend.

[eeevil conservative]

you'll love this story....from WND...but- if true-- I will have no hair left by the end of this week...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1685695/posts

[Number57]

Yeah... I have a few more chapters that seem to work.

I guess you'll hafta read the book.

/ever lasting tease

[Chena]

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out in the morning. Rest well, chena

[Number57]

Man, you thing my first chapter was crap? I guess... a few people will think so.

[eeevil conservative]

g'nite!!!

[P-Marlowe]

Thanks for the laugh. That is the funniest thing I've read in a long time!

[KneelBeforeZod]

make Rosebud the sled

[GeronL]

Here is the start of a story that I never finished

---

The Age of Designer Tribalism

by Floyd Looney

.

splunk, splunk, splunk...

That incessant dripping noise has woke me up again, I can't see where its coming from but I know it has part of the concrete floor wet. The moldy smell has gotten stronger on a daily basis since I came to be here. It is so dark, I can never tell what time of day it is. How did I come to be here, in this cell that would make Satan proud of my torturers? It is a story I have recounted and retold to myself more than once a day since I woke up in here the first time.

---

It wasn't all that long ago that a majority of citizens of this country were prosperous, even our 'poor' were doing better than the vast majority of the worlds population. I personally had been fired as a history teacher from a school because I taught real history not what the bosses called the 'correct' history. The 'correct' history was full of lies and absurdities.

I found a job as a salesman for an upscale business selling home appliances, this wasn't the Maytag™ stuff you see on TV commercials. This was the shiny brass, chrome and copper stuff that you see in the kitchens of the rich and famous. It was truly beautiful kitchenware.

Anyway, on the side I wrote for a conservative journal dedicated to reviving the real history of the United States and the world. We called the purveyors of the 'correct' history names like 'revisionists' and 'third worlders'. The New History Review did okay, I suppose, but even with thousands of readers it couldn't hope to compete with ten thousand schools, large publishing houses and the traditional media.

It wasn't history that was at the forefront of the battle, we were fighting a skirmish and only seeing a small part of the problem. The worldview that brought us 'correct' history was much broader than we knew at the time, we were in a culture war. The designer tribalism of the leftist cult was succeeding in all but destroying the United States' own culture.

You know the people I am talking about, the culture I am referring to. Its the same culture that makes a TV program where its a child that lectures adults on the ways of the world. It is the adults who think we should live like nomads on the plains. These people who believe that bringing education, commerce and technology to the third war to replace cannibalism and tribal wars is something akin to a holocaust.

Normal people would call them weirdo's, probably even full out freakish.

As a teacher in a public school I was involved with showing a film for students, it was on a DVD and a big screen actually but someone needed to hit the light switch. The film of the day was about a tribe in Africa and their culture, we didn't teach American culture of course. It portrayed a paganistic ritual where the participants slaughtered a calf and drank its blood while it was still warm. The stab in the side of the calf allowed the blood to be pumped by its still beating heart into the wood-carved bowl.

The bonfire and hypnotic drumbeat added to the cultish feel of what was going on, we were watching a culture that revered gods of death, pleasure, war and animals. A culture that tolerated and celebrated deadly raids against neighboring tribes. Soon the film ended and I turned the lights on.

The children sat stunned and looking positively sickened. Rightly so, for we had a glimpse into darkness of 'savage' people. Their instict told them that what tbey saw on the TV screen was inherently evil and part of what should be in the past. The United States and the ways of the west were far superior with its medical care, freedoms of religion and speech, technology and even the fast foods.

The other teachers though were giddy and excited and they lectured the students about how the film showed a remarkable and different culture, but one equal or even superior to our own. The fact that it seemed primitive to us only showed that we are not an enlightened people. Our people had once oppressed these people with colonialism and slavery she told them as if they were both equally awful.

Colonialism was an attempt to bring the enlightened primitive peoples things like language, religion, technology and health care. This was a bad thing, of course. The part that was really bad was not the colonialism part though, it was the modernizing of the backward societies that outraged the leftists. The superior primitive societies had a right not to be educated, not to be given health care or language or commerce or technology. It was also somehow wrong to give them a choice.

This squeamish policy of letting a group of people rot while modern culture moved forward is why the Aborigine of Australia to have reading level by college age to drop from sixth grade and even thid grade levels. Now Aborigine students might arrive at college wholly illiterate, although their grandparents could read and write.

What a sad unculture indeed where the uneducated child with no life experience can be considered the better teacher than adults with decades of learning and experience. It was like the line in William Henry's 1994 book In Defense of Elitism where he argued, "It is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the moon as to put a bone in your nose".

---

[Number57]

I am a crappy writer.

I won't deny it.

But I can paint a picture with words.

[processing please hold]

Then he asked himself, "why is it that in the Charlie Brown specials on the TV, the adults are never heard actually speaking?"

Long ago, when he used to have friends they would talk about how their children loved watching Charlie Brown specials and there were many, Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving all holidays with family in mind. How he hated hearing them talking about their families. Something he didn't have and would never want to have. Or so he told himself. But one thing one of the fathers said was that the children never noticed that the adults in the cartoon never spoke. For some odd reason, that comment stayed with him. When he told the younger version of himself no, he didn't know her, the man then reached into his trouser pocket and pulled from it, a folded laced handkerchief. Almost reverently, he began to slowly unfold it.

[GeronL]

darn that </ center> command

[processing please hold]

I'll be waiting.....

[Chena]

Good evening to you too!

[P-Marlowe]

Confused, excited and deathly afraid, he begins to shake, tremors building from deep within his belly. His head jerks slightly, in tiny movements that might suggest Parkinson's to the casual observer.

???

That line should be considered for this contest.

[Number57]

Here's Charlie Brown gone NUTZ

[Tired of Taxes]

Wish I could help you. But, though I majored in Journalism, I have never written further than "Chapter One". :-)

I started writing stories on a manual typewriter when I was a kid. I was a much better writer back then. These word processors have turned us all into obsessive editors. I even edit my emails and posts over and over before sending them. They've also made us lazy, too, because they pick up all the misspellings and grammatical errors for us.

So, try using an old typewriter again, or try writing the last chapter with pen and paper.

Your writing seems very natural. It's always a better read when the writer himself is enjoying the story, too.

If I were you, I would change this sentence:

>>> He knew of only one person that used that knock, but they weren't there. <<<

Either: "He knew of only one person who used that knock, but she (or he) wasn't there."

Or: "Only one person used that knock, but she (or he) wasn't there."

Also, remember the "subjective were" when expressing a wish or desire. Example: "If only he were..."

Maybe you can end the story at the second to the last chapter. Just say you wanted to leave 'em "hanging at the end." ;-)

[Number57]

I keep telling you... I can't write.

But I'm betting I write better than you.

[Number57]

Thanks... remember, you are critiquing one of a number of chapters.

Seriously. Thanks.