I'm really fond of this story, right up to the ending. I hate the ending, but I can't seem to pull it together and come up with anything better. Suggestions on this story and any part of this story are welcome, but I'm especially interested in thoughts on the ending.
Monologue Mania
Karen had always had an inner-monologue. When she was younger it was marvelous. It narrated every detail of her life, each experience in sparkling clarity, even embellishing a bit here and there. Her inner-monologue had managed to make her life sound interesting and exciting. It was responsible for all of her successes as a writer. When something particularly interesting or noteworthy happened, it offered up a vivid, eloquent, and engaging narration that she translated into fiction. Those stories had captivated readers often enough to provide her with a comfortable income.
It had never occurred to her that other people might not have inner-monologues of their own. She just assumed that everybody had one. As for the contributions hers made to her writing career, she just assumed that her inner-monologue was more eloquent than most.
When it started the trouble was only annoying, but after a couple of years it began to really interfere with Karen’s ability to concentrate. It wasn’t like schizophrenia, exactly. One day her inner-monologue just stopped narrating her life to her; it even quit speaking in complete sentences. It started blurting out random words and phrases and singing odd bits of songs at totally unpredictable times.
She knew exactly when it had happened. She was eating breakfast at the time. She had just finished off her first cup of coffee and was polishing off the last bits of muffin when she distinctly heard her inner-monologue comment, “A-hole.” It spoke in the phony Dutch accent of a popular comedic villain. At first she had thought it was just the usual odd bit of pointless jabber that the sub-conscious occasionally dredges up and flings into the forefront of awareness. But as her day wore on she became increasingly aware of the absence of narration. Late that afternoon, at the grocery store, it began to sing particularly irritating snatches of jingles from television commercials then quickly segued into theme songs and show-toons.
By the time Karen got home it had escalated to belting out children’s songs and seemed especially fond of “Ring Around the Rosie.” After several hours of this, Karen felt she couldn’t take it anymore. She tried to reason with it.
“Now see here, this isn’t productive in the least. I have things to do and this incessant singing has got to stop."
But it didn’t stop. Instead it crooned gleefully, “hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go…It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor…I love you, you love me, we’re a happy fam-i-ly…I love you, you love me…” Like an old vinyl album the voice began to skip and just repeat that last bit over and over.
Karen got angry. “Stop it. Stop, stop, stop. Just knock it off.”
“This old man, he played one…”
She shouted, “Oh come on.” The voice stopped.
After that Karen began to give serious thought to her inner-monologue. She began to wonder if other people really did have inner-monologues of their own. She thought about seeing a doctor but dismissed the idea as an overreaction.
Good days were quiet days. On those days it didn’t have much to say and didn’t sing at all. On bad days it talked a lot, or worse yet sang. The singing was intolerable. Mercifully, it didn’t do much of that.
For the next two years most days were good days. Those were the days when she wrote, but her writing suffered from the lack of her inner-monologue. For the first time in her life Karen struggled to find her own voice. She moved away from writing dramatic stories about adventurous characters who did interesting things and began writing dark stories with somber characters who struggled with strange afflictions. These new stories weren’t as popular as her older stuff had been and her income began to drop off. During those years, Karen occasionally reconsidered seeing a doctor, but the good days out numbered the bad and she never got around to making an appointment.
Then things began to get gradually worse. The voice started blurting and singing more often. Eventually it reached the point when a good day was a day when her inner-monologue didn’t sing. The days when it didn’t talk at all became a memory.
Writing became harder and her stories took on a psychotic tone. Her characters began to come out as confused and irrational beings whose woes made little sense. One story was about a woman who kept her dead mother’s ashes in a shoe box and jabbered incoherently at her own clocks, another was about a talking dog named Oliveloaf who fell in love with a can of coffee. None of these stories really went anywhere. They all had interesting bits and pieces, but none of them moved in a linear fashion or ever reached any real conclusion.
After her publisher returned “Oliveloaf,” with a nasty note about friends not letting friends drink and write, Karen again considered seeing a doctor. The more she thought about seeing a doctor the more frightened she became of what he might say. After a good deal of consideration she decided against it.
Eventually Karen was forced to take a job at a discount kitchenwares shop just to make ends meet. She had been there three months, answering questions about blenders and microwaves, and helping customers find just the right spoon set when something finally happened to break her resolve.
She had been trying to help a customer pick out a food processor for his wife. The man was already agitated by the time he found her and hadn’t been willing to wait for her answers to any of his questions.
“What’s the difference between these things? Why’s that one cost so much more when this one obviously has a better variety of blades? Are these things dishwasher safe?” After each question, Karen tried to interject an answer, but the man just rushed on with new questions.
Then the voice started. “Hula-hoop,” it yelled in her mind.
“Is there a warranty on this one? Never mind, I don’t like that color anyway.”
“Axel grease.”
Karen sorted out who had said what and responded, “We have a variety of colors in this model, it has a very nice selection of blades, and it comes with a warranty.”
The customer frowned at the box, “No. That one looks too small. She wants something pretty big. What about that one?”
“Toasty-O’s.”
Karen’s voice quavered a bit, “Um, I think…”
“Never mind. Never mind. I like the looks of this one. It’s nice and big, but it doesn’t look like it has many blades. Does it have a grater blade? I know she wants a grater blade. What about a thin slicer? Oh, and she said it needs to be a space saver. No, wait. She wanted a space saver coffee maker. Anyway does this model come in black?”
The voice started singing. “Tomorrow, tomorrow it’s only a day away.”
She wiped her eyes. “I uh, I think so. Yes, here’s a black one.”
“At the Copa, Copacabana…”
The customer scrutinized the box. “I don’t know, I’ve never heard of this brand before. Maybe this isn’t the one I should get. Don’t you have one like this made by G.E.?”
“Rain drops on roses, and whiskers on kittens…”
Karen rubbed the back of her arm, coughed, and tugged at her shirt.
“The hills are alive with the sound of music…”
“Hey, are you even listening to me?”
“Jingle bells, batman smells, robin laid an egg…”
“Hello? I said, does G.E. make one like this?”
“Oh, I wish I was a little bar of soap, bar of soap…”
Karen put her hands against her temples, and leaned against the shelves behind her.
“Look, I just want an answer. Does G.E. make one of these or not?” The man was waving his arms now.
“The wheels on the bus go round and round…”
Karen shook her head violently and howled, “Would you just shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up. I can’t stand your incessant noise.”
Shocked and offended by Karen’s sudden outburst, the customer stomped away to the front of the store and made a complaint against her. Within fifteen minutes she had been fired. After that, Karen made an appointment to see her doctor.
The doctor eyed her quizzically, “It just sings? It doesn’t tell you to hurt yourself or hurt other people?”
“No, it doesn’t tell me to do things. But it doesn’t just sing, sometimes it blurts out weird stuff.” Karen sighed.
“Wheatgerm.” Her inner-monologue barked.
“Mmm Hmm.” The doctor nodded. “What kinds of things does it say?”
“Spork.”
“Just random stuff. There’s never any telling what it’ll say.”
He made a notation. “Okay, and what does it sing about?”
“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious…”
Karen groaned. “Mostly show-toons.”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay, and is it talking or singing right now?”
“Eee de dee dee, de dee, de dee dee, de eee umm mum ooaway…”
She pressed the heel of her hands into her eyes.
“In the jungle, the mighty jungle…”
Karen managed to nod, “It’s singing.”
“A-wimoweh, a-wimoweh a-wimoweh, a-wimoweh…”
She whimpered, “This has to stop. I can’t function anymore. I can’t write, I can’t sleep, I can’t hold an intelligible conversation. It just got me fired for pities sake.”
“Lions, and tigers, and bears, Oh My!”
The doctor patted her shoulder. “I think we need to consider medication. There are a lot of excellent medications out there. I’m going to write you a prescription for an antipsychotic. I want you to take one of these every night at bedtime.”
For six months Karen took the pills faithfully but she couldn’t tell that they made any difference. Her inner-monologue just kept right on singing and blurting. She decided to see the doctor again. He increased her dosage and told her to give it at least three more months. The new dosage seemed to help. Her inner-monologue slowly began to quiet down and Karen started to relax quite a bit. She knew the medication was helping when she started selling stories again.
It took almost a year but her inner-monologue finally stopped singing and blurting. It never narrated her life for her anymore, the medication seemed to silence it completely. She still had bad days but now a bad day was punctuated by oppressive silence rather than sprinkled with random chatter.
4 comments:
Wow, and you're right - the ending is sort of a let down. When I read stuff like this, my reaction is "Who wrote this? Why? How much of this reflects the author's experience? Or is it completely made up?
As I'm thinking about this, perhaps it would be best to start with the ending - or a revised ending. There are so many people we see and judge with no idea of who they are or how they got to be the person we see. Maybe you can start with another person seeing her and making some conclusion about her in her new state, and then figure out a way to then switch to the character's view and who she once was before this happened.
Maybe there should be something about the relationship of the woman and her inner voice. Maybe it gets mad at her for taking her for granted, or getting successful from her but never acknowledging her contribution. I don't know.
Another path is to follow up on the mental health aspect. I don't know enough about the symptoms and the results of medication. Maybe you do and that is why you are writing about this. But the story could also enlighten the reader about mental health. Having more details about the effects of real mental illness (well that you have, though I don't know how this mimics pschotic symptoms) and medication could make the story more alive and poignant.
The only other people I remember besides the lady and her voice, are the doctor and the customer. The doctor may as well be a robot - we don't really know about him, nor does she engage him at all. The customer is also just a prop to explain why she goes to the doctor - but that exchange gives us a lot more detail about things. Perhaps making either of these characters fuller, or adding another character would help. It seems she basically lived alone, wrote, and send her work in for publication. There was no hint of a social life. Maybe that would give more tension to the story. How does all this affect other people? Right now it only affects her. (the store example really doesn't affect other people because the job is not really something important to her, just a means to an end.)
Hope this helps. The only real, if tiny specific contribution , is "for pity's sake" instead of 'pities sake'.
Don't give up on this one.
Steve
Thanks Steve, you've given me some things to think on.
This story is completely made up. It was sparked off by an off the cuff comment I made jokingly about getting a song stuck in my head.
I think you're right about making the Dr. a much bigger part of the story. I think maybe I should make him more overtly a psychiatrist and cover some therapeutic ground.
Thanks again.
Hey everyone. I'm trying to get back in the swing of things. Hope you didn't miss me too much.
"Karen had always had an inner-monologue." This sentence really bugs me. To me, 'Had always had' implies that she doesn't exactly have it anymore. She had it, but at some point it went away which then would make someone say she had had it. That's a pretty confusing explanation, but it's a confusing first sentence, too.
"The days when it didn’t talk at all became a memory." Right now I'm having trouble following what the problem is exactly. She needs the inner monolouge to be a writer, but now she's annoyed that it's talking. I think you need to do a better job of showing how the inner monolouge used to be helpful, but now has turned into an annoyance.
"They all had interesting bits and pieces, but none of them moved in a linear fashion or ever reached any real conclusion." I can easily see this line becoming the theme of this story. Why not have this story be one of Karen's crazy stories that doesn't go anywhere. Her inner monolouge writing the story about how her inner monolouge took over her life. It would take a little more attention to detail, and some reworking, but I could see it happening.
Overall, I think the strongest parts of the story is the social situation Karen is in at the store when her inner monolouge takes over. More of those would make the story funnier and more relatable. Who hasn't had something annoying going on in their head when they needed to be concentrating on something else.
A few other things:
"When she was younger it was marvelous. It narrated every detail of her life, each experience in sparkling clarity, even embellishing a bit here and there."
This is just one example I picked out, but there's a lot of instances of this - very generalized writing. You say "every detail of her life" but then you don't give us any. You say it was "marvelous," but you don't show us how it was marvelous. It's really getting at the issue of showing versus telling. I think a lot of this story tells when it should show.
"During those years, Karen occasionally reconsidered seeing a doctor, but the good days out numbered the bad and she never got around to making an appointment."
"By the time Karen got home it had escalated"
Watch out for the verb 'got' I use the find function in Microsoft Word to see all the places I use it, and 9 times out of 10 I can pick a better verb. It's just a silly word that doesn't say much.
I hope some of this helps.
Orianna: the ending…I don’t know, I’ll give it some thought, but first why the sudden change in the inner monologue? The reason for the change is what will drive the ending.
I have to tell you; as soon as I read the inner monologue blurting out A-hole, you had me hooked. I like the story, I like the tone: sort of a detached tone…fits it well.
This is good work, keep on with this.
-Steve (the other Steve)
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