End State Maintenance and Other Stories

You didn't know what this book was about until it was done. It's about time and chance and choices. You improvised it from nothing. You are drinking wine. Red. Enjoying music. Blue. Maybe some more wine. You are daydreaming. An idea flutters around in your head. You follow it. More wine, more music. You begin to improvise a story on the idea. You conjure up some characters to carry the story, and they help you stack up the narrative into harmonies, and then more ideas flutter in. You are having a lot of fun with it all - absurd events, goofy people, ridiculous jokes and strange ideas. More wine - who's counting? Now some sadness. Life is not all fun and games, you say. Poignant for awhile but you shift gears because, well, schadenfreude is more fun than pathos. You struggle, and now you are upbeat. What are you trying to say? You tell me as long as you don't let reality intrude. You are the master of it all. It is your world and you are having a great time making all this up. But you have quite the mess on your hands with all these narratives, characters and ideas. How do you get out of here? Okay, enough wine, enough music. You can't end the story until you stop improvising and wrap this all together - so get on with it. Literature is tough work you say as you recline on the couch and adjust the pillows. You've got it! The perfect conclusion. You fall asleep, wake up, finish the wine and write it all down. There you go.