This act imagines its reception

Not having written any serious fiction for years stings at moments but is generally a soreness and atrophy. Unnoticed except in moments of exertion—entirely tolerable with distraction or medication.

In this thing I’ve been trying to write for 12 or 13 years now there is a character who kills himself. He was adored but slowly distanced from others. Two of the others in particular can barely handle it when it happens. They see why he went. He was a writer who never experienced a sting. Never ached. He was merely made distant to the world. By the world. On his work. I could never name him. His ending shoos the other two off well-worn paths to the grave. Makes them make themselves.

A funny, intelligent, kind man of conscience visited this site for the first time on March 12th, 2005. He made a couple of comments here; my favorites actually (one and two). We traded some emails now and again. The last email he sent me was February 20th, 2007, 4:49pm. I’m lately informed by his equally friendly sister that 42 days later he killed himself. His name was Edward Vela III.

As with another recent loss of something I never had, I feel mistakes were made. How I let the world of men distance me with so little fight.

This seemed a prod to move me to work on the novel again. After a day of fruitless technical plinking trying to avoid failing to write I fired up the application I set up to write on it a long time back.

All of the sudden I had the name for the character. Gage. I was finally able to start writing some dialog for him. What I quickly dropped into however was his suicide note. And quickly retreated. It was far too on point, cheerful, seductive, and difficult to deny.

Maybe I’m not so sore as would be convenient just now.