u/throwaway1937462919

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I want to write the next Pulitzer winner, but my only worldly experience is furry inflation porn. I'm so tired. My only grounding point in popular culture is the names of Pokémon. I spent multiple all-nighters reading the MLA and Chicago style guides so I could decide how to punctuate the em dashes in a sentence about a character's belly getting big.

I read real books and the knowledge slides off of me. I read Intermezzo and What Belongs to You and Her Body and Other Parties and Project Hail Mary and Babel and Ulysses and just about everything by N. K. Jemisin and Hemingway and Ursula K. Le Guin and ee cummings. I've read poetry, think pieces, essay compilations, short stories, epics, flash fiction, cut-up technique bullshit, and everything in between.

Every single time, the only thing I can remember is an inflation scene that didn't happen. I am going fucking insane. My friends keep telling me there was not an inflation scene in The Old Man and the Sea. There is. I can cite it word for word, I have multiple PDFs of it on my computer, but when I try to show them, it evaporates. I'm starting to believe them. Maybe it really is me.

I can't tell you who the main character of Ulysses is after five read throughs. I don't even remember what James Joyce's first name is. But you know what I do remember? His letters to his wife. Word for word, I can remember them, I can recite them, and yes, I've checked: I know them down to the punctuation marks. I read them once, seven years ago, on a plane to New Jersey. God save me.

I cried after I read House of Leaves, but when I woke up the next morning, the only thing I remembered was Ampharos and Charizard. I'm aggressively thinking of Star Fox characters right now and fighting the urge to write about them.

Please help me, I've only been able to write extremely purple inflation porn with pretentious themes that no one could possibly enjoy. When will the bubble finally pop?