Attack Of The 50-foot Verbose Mutant Killer Fountain Pens From Mars | Page 2

becoming overwhelmed by the sheer deluge of noisome composition. I was definitely destined for somebody's bad books...
That's when the Critics smashed through the doors. You should have been there to see it for yourself. Some piece of work. The action didn't last long after that.
They destroyed them. Drowned them in scorn. The Fountains Pens From Mars just withered and died under the Critics' combined vitriol aplomb and heat-beam stares.
With the last bubbling decomposition writhing its last on the ink-swilled floor, I crawled out from under the table. I had to thank these guys for saving my arse from the verbiage swamp. I went up to the nearest editor, grinning like a classic hippy with a bowel full of good shit.
He saw me. This Heraclean Hero of the Delete Key watched me sidle nonchalantly his way. He turned and holstered his Red Pen. Adopting a casual stance, he rested one gauntleted hand on his hip while the other reached up to peel off his respirator hood.
I stopped then, and stuttered a few grateful incoherences.
The Hero's mouth curled in disdain.
"Goddam passive voices," he said, "more trouble than worth."
I grinned a little weak.
He must have mistaken me for some other scribe...
Mark Cantrell, Bolton, 16 November 2004

In the beginning there was...
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Penning The Altered States
EVERY session at the keyboard is a journey to unknown places.
My body might reside in the here and now of the physical universe, but like the ancient shaman high on exotic herbs, my mind - or soul depending on your inclinations - is away elsewhere.
Not to the gods. Or the spirits of animals and ancestors.
Just. Elsewhere.
To that place that somehow reaches back to this world to manifest itself on the glowing screen or the coffee-stained paper.
It's a hard place to reach.
Some, again, we're back to shamans, have preached the wondrous facilitator that is illegal drugs. Pop a pill, snort some neuro-chemically interesting powder and open the doors to perception.
Others might swear by various concoctions of alcohol.
And yes, there's always the boring swot who preaches the virtues of hard work.
They overlook something.
Not about the hard work, that's a given whatever substance you abuse or none. And it isn't sleep deprivation either, which can sometimes be a wonderful hallucinatory mind-swirling phenomenon for the creative writer out for a quick nib.
No. They forget.
That writing itself is an altered stream of consciousness. The words themselves, and the fizzing incandescent ideas they dance to represent, can themselves open that mystical doorway to perception and otherworldliness.
I think, drugs aside, those ancient shamans knew that little secret too.
These days they have a phrase for it. Typically boring. The kind of label that only someone who's spent years using their mind to learn the theories and hypotheses of what makes the brain work rather than the mind itself could come up with.
Hey, let's take the essential mystery out of the mind, they might have declared. Then thought even that's too scintillating and figured let's just map the neurons and stick a few electrodes in to see how they mechanically behave.
They call it the hypnagogic state.
It has different brainwave patterns apparently, quite distinct from phases like REM or deep sleep, or various neurologically and experientially interesting substances.
I suppose as writers we forget this too. We just say we are on a roll.
On a whole roll of flying carpet, maybe.
Because that's when we're flying.
We've got there without chemicals. Only the most powerful drug known to man: words.
Opening the door might be hard work. We might stare at the keyboard or at the paper for ages. Frustrated. Grumpy. Wondering why we bother. And then the idea detonates in the head, or else we get 'back into the flow' and suddenly we're there.
Not at the table or the PC. Not in the caf?. But out there.
In whatever world we're struggling to create.
Once we're there, the outside world, this mundane place, is gone. It's beyond our perception, because - temporarily at least - we have moved on to a higher plane of existence.
So sure, it exists only in the mnemonics of words, but mathematicians express the entire complexity and beauty of the Universe in the mnemonics of numbers and algebra. Why should ours be any less real because the mnemonics assemble in our heads and encoded on paper by the mechanics of the motor cortex, bones and muscle. Oh yes, and the pen (or keyboard).
The Muse is out there. Hiding, and giggling coy in the cosmology of our altered state.
And we search in strange places every time we sit at a desk.
So be adventurous. Don't just push at the doors, fling them wide and see what's out there. You might be amazed at what comes back