Hold on a minute there, Dorothy.

The only place like home is a short story about cottonwood trees and drowning adolescents.

You wanna hear the truth? I adore the characters in The Lonely Old Man. As underdeveloped, ambiguous, and cliché as they clearly are, the charm of rural childhood is something that I hold very dear. As a result, lung cancer and tipsy arguments will be the only remaining elements of what some consider to be heartache.

Heartache is subjective. Maturity calls it experience, productivity calls it wisdom, and creativity is genuinely thrilled. Also, John Prine was lovely, but the brain doesn't always have time to shout "you better look out down below" before succumbing to complete and utter anxiety. In literature, heartache is a methodology—a tool used by the author to engage readers' emotions and satisfy his own angst. A well-written story breaks any willing heart.

Anyway, The Lonely Old Man is rambling along. The bit I’m writing now is definitely unique. Certain (often meaningless) details are as pedantic as last the bit, and I took extra measure to retain that trait. In my experience, stories told by elderly folk are full of charming/pointless details. So I kept that. But the rest, especially my cast of cliché characters, is growing a mind of its own. At least, a different mind than the last installment. And I think I've discovered why this is. It’s all due to perspective.  

See, each memory conveyed by the old man is written as he would have remembered it. The first tale, for example, was from the perspective of a young child. The old man was young when the event took place, and therefore remembers the occasion from a kid’s perspective. So I wrote it from that point of view. However, the voice changes in tale número dos because it’s now from the perspective of a college student. Sure, he’s ancient in the present day, but the scene is remembered as he was then: a twentysomething university punk.

Haha, I've got a defense for my inconsistency. Bugger off, you wonderful people who’d never call me on it. Honestly, time between posts probably contributes the most to that inconsistency. I believe there were nine or ten months between part three and four. Yeah. I know. That’s why I’m writing the next three or four parts all together. Granted, they may not fit the blog format with cliffhangers and all that jazz, but it’s more satisfying as an author to be writing for the story’s own sake, as opposed to writing for blogging’s sake.  

Oh! And prompt! Caleb already posted his (link for the lazy), and mine is...coming. He made me promise to write something happy for a change, so it’s become a bit of a challenge. Trust me when I say that suicides are always easier to write than proposals. Though some would argue they’re the same thing...Hey-O!

Dear, dear reader. I need sleep. Farewell. And remember kids: Coldplay still sucks.