Karl Brummer asked me to join a group on Facebook. The group was for a new publication he was putting together. In this publication will be a collection of literature etc that people have submitted. It had to be around 2000 words in length and the subject was open to choice.
This is my submission:
Writing 2000 words is harder than I thought. I have 10 so far. Not enough. Writing 2000 words in context with a worthwhile subject is even harder. I have 29 so far.
Is it wrong to simply write 2000 words on the subject of writing 2000 words? Updating the word count every now and then? 55 words scream yes.
If words could speak, what they say? Would they all gather round and say “volumes”? I did hear once that words speak volumes. It makes sense to me that this is what they would say. “Volumes” all day. 97 words agree. I know they agree, they all sit on the page smiling at me and saying “volumes, volumes, volumes”.
118 words now.
From here on out I shall write with a little more point. What point? What is the point? Not very optimistic, a little more realistic. Slightly cynical even. 149 words herein.
On the subject of pictures; one picture is 1000 words. So, why not add a picture and half the number of words needing to be written? 178 words.
Why not add two pictures and scrap words altogether? Why not change dictionaries to photo albums. Rather than look for definition, look for an example of the word being used in context. 212 words disagree. They want to be heard. Heard, and not seen.
Small children do not have as large a vocabulary as adults. They should be seen, but not heard. 242 words speak “volumes”.
In the dead of night, if you visit a library, you will hear the deafening bellow of words. Each book is a nation, each letter a limb. The words cheer and laugh “volumes, volumes, VOLUMES!”
And so, 283 words make up a small country. But like all civilisations, the population will grow. The number of words will double, treble, quadruple even. And then, the end of the page, the end of the chapter, the end of the book.
It seems interesting to me that society is reflected so blatantly in words. 337 words is a small amount. The longer and the more complicated words are less used, less welcomed by the masses of people who use words on a daily basis. This is because people are scared of intellect I believe. People are like words. Words are like people. These 386 words on this page are individual creatures. Every one with its own purpose and place. People, humans, on the whole, do not find cleverness an appealing trait. Why is that? I do not know. I do not know if it is a subject I wish to dip into just yet. But I shall say this; it seems to me that people should speak volumes. We should be as words are. Like the 459 words I have writ.
Not that I am suggesting, for one moment, that I speak wisdom of any sort. Or rather, that I speak more wisdom than you, the reader. The mere fact that you have read this far would give me indication you have patience. A virtue which has skipped the shorter words of the world. However, these 519 words are not misplaced. Like all societies there is a collection of long, middle and short words, there are common groups and structures. Again, mimicking the world. The class systems of our country are like the words on a page. They all have their importance and their place in a book. But perhaps the types of books or types of places do not marry in the same way. Longer words seem to fit better with longer words. But then again, they would not fit at all if it were not for the shorter words. We are all words. We should speak “volumes”! 622 words now.
I am getting somewhere I think. I had no idea such an analogy would come from me, nor did I think I would write a piece of satire. But, the unexpected is to be expected. 660 words are not unexpected, we have come this far and you have taken them in on some level. Nevertheless, there are words to come and they are in an unknown space.
And so, words speak volumes. Children should be hidden. Adults should speak a greater amount. We should not shy away from the intricate and beauty found in a problematic word. The phrases and expressions discovered in an uncovered collection of little letters. Put side by side in a proud and fixed regiment. Words are our leaders. Words are our armed forces. 753 words at present.
The Pen is mightier than the sword. To a word, the pen is god. When you write for an extended period of time and you have cramp in your hands and you find you can write no more, you stop. This cease in writing is the word Sabbath. This is their Sunday, or Saturday, or Friday, or whatever day it is. I think it depends on the font.
Is the pen mightier than the pencil? 832 words don’t know. I do not know.
Writing 2000 words certainly isn’t easy. 846 words are not even half the amount required. 855 levels of “volume”. Mass is as relevant here. Mass is what makes up the volume. The word is volume and the collective noun of a volume is mass. A mass of volume is a mass of words.
I have realised, I have written nothing of sentences. I wonder where a sentence would fit into this puzzle. Which part of my little quandary is the string of words known as such? 926 words, but I wonder…. 63 lines, this is not the same. A row of bricks may be measured in lines and bricks have common ground with words, but the word transcends the line. The words are a mass, a line or more, or less. A mass of volume stretching with endless potential. Unless, you are me and then instead of potential you have struggle. You fight and fight to think, and when you finally think you have found a tangible thought, it seems contrived and empty. Or worse, it is not your own.
1020 words, from now on it is the short run home.
No single word has ownership, or rather, should have ownership. To own a word is to own a voice. Each word with its own volume and own voice cannot be bought or sold. In this sense plagiarism is a concept that I disagree with. To say that a string of words can be anything other than a string of words is nonsense. What right do we have to put a boundary in a field we do not own? Words again, prove how they are like societies. Currently there is trouble in Sri Lanka, I won’t begin to claim I am an expert on the subject but it seems that it is a fight over copyright infringements; it’s about ownership and the plagiarism of land. 1155 words, and slowly we slide further into the absurd.
This writing is becoming noisy. The 1171 words are each talking over one another. I can’t work out what manner of event these words are attending. I would like to think it is social. Perhaps alcohol is involved? This would explain the turn to the ridiculous in subject and the whimsicality of some thoughts I put across. I would also give an explanation for the noise. We all become loud and brash after a few drinks. All shouting “volume” over one another. 1247 words, drunkenly spewing forth their simple quantity of word.
Words are used incorrectly on occasion and words are often misspelt. These words are deformities and mutations. I do not know if they are for a positive or a negative. Is the change in a word a good thing? American English differs from English English. Only today I questioned with a friend the way whiskey is spelt whisky, and visa versa, depending on the region. Is one wrong and one right? Or are they just different?
1333 words all different and all the same. All part of a possible picture waiting to be painted. They existed in an ether of mystery, hanging in a wardrobe waiting to be worn like a familiar jacket. But as styles and fashions change, words are forgotten, thrown away. People are forgotten, places are forgotten, words, books and everything are all forgotten in time. 1396 words will be forgotten, probably very quickly. We only really remember what is relevant to us and what we can connect too. I don’t suppose this is relevant to anything.
1427 irrelevant words, each is brilliant as the next. Each as pointless and important as anything else in the material world. But, words are immaterial. These words are certainly immaterial. But that is beside the point, which in its own way is exactly the point. How funny circles are. The extremes of poles bend round and end in the same place. Do words end at the beginning or do words end at the end? I do not know. 1505 words do not know.
It is interesting that each word is made of characters and every person is made of characters. Emotions are characters and letters are punctuation of feeling. Small details in words create anger or love or any one in a range of sentiment, sometimes more. We are words. We are long and short words. All tangled in definition and context, we are sometimes irrelevant, sometimes misspelt.
8470 characters, in 1578 words. An average of 5 or so personality traits per person. But nothing is really average. We are all our own. Words are all their own and alone.
1607 words alone on a page together.
Words are like people, how many times has that been said so far? I am not motivated to count it. Not in the slightest.
Words need to be cultivated and groomed. They are like plants also. From words come fruit and like fruit, some are easy to find and some grow in lands far away. Fruits can be combined and cuttings can be made so new fruits are created. Like words, like people.
1687 words combined into one text. The page is the ground on which the words grow. And we, the people, are a fertiliser. But words help themselves. Words spark thoughts and the discovery of new words lead in new directions. 1727 words are a new direction.
I am losing my thread. Do words ever lose their thread? Do they ever look from side to side and wonder what the hell they’re doing stuck between hell and doing? I think not. I suppose a word is not a conscious being and as such does not question itself. We, the readers of words, question their value. In this we are better than the words. But one example of greater awareness is not an example of superiority. If anything it is verging on paranoia. Do we praise the paranoid for their obsessive qualities? No, we do not. We lock up their minds with drugs and therapy sessions. Should we lock up lost words? The nonsense words? No. not at all. 1854 words here like the company of one another.
Gibberish words are equal to the significant. Words beat us in this way. They’re unbiased and unprejudiced. They rely on one another to tell a good story, to convey a message or to simply to make an idiosyncratic noise.
1902 words based on the charismatic thoughts I have had on the concept of writing words. How interesting it is the amount of chit-chat you can deliver when you over think a problem. And now we come to an end. The exploration I took is dwindling as the word count begins its last few steps. 1957 words. Not long now.
A conclusion of sorts would have been best here, but what can I conclude? Nothing really, just my talent of procrastination and capricious study. 1986 words. Would it be terrible if I were to do a count down for the last section? 2005?! Shit.
