Martin Rayburn
Short Fiction
I am a writer. Or at least I used to be, I think, I used to think of myself as a writer, till all my words left me. It’s not quite right to say all the words left me, for I still have some I can recall. These words above, for instance—that I wrote them surely means I recalled them. But as soon as I try to be a true writer, to describe a person, evoke an emotion, depict a scene, I encounter my old archive of worn words, words I’ve used an embarrassing amount of times. When you use the same words repeatedly, you incur the risk of others discovering the narrow limits of your mind. Geniuses don’t run out of words, but I have. Run out, that is. It’s not that I don’t know a lot of words; I know a prodigious amount, but I can’t recall them when I need them, which, because I am a writer, is always. Always is when I need all the words. The only thing left to do for one in my predicament, I reason, is to cross off words I’ve used before. Perhaps not every word I use twice or more, for some amount of repetition is inevitable, but those words used habitually, which stand out to that reader who will detect my repetitions and therefore know my shameful secret, the smallness of my mind. The smallness of my mind is what I must keep hidden—the unused words, or the words that disguise the fact of their repetition, conceal this smallness, making me appear deceptively expansive, like one of those puffer fishes that inflate themselves so they don’t get devoured. But I am deflated. I need a new beginning, a new strategy for puffing myself up and disguising my smallness. So from this point, I hereby relinquish my favorite words, at least the ones so salient, in my previous and present writing, that people will find me out. Being their own sort of repetitions, cliches, too, they have to go, I hereby…do away with…expunge…annihilate…the rote phrases and previously used words. Given the subject matter at hand, I’ll allow myself the word “word,” that can stay, but I must rigorously subtract those words I’m in the habit of deploying. As the reader will see, this piece will be ridden with cross-outs, which presents a certain conundrum, the question of whether to read the crossed-out words or to pass over to the next uncrossed-out word. If the reader reads through the line to the crossed-out words, those little kernels of my shame, then I will have been repeating myself and they will discern the smallness of my mind. But if the reader opts to skip over the crossed-out words, which is after all what a crossed-out word seems to direct one to do, then the writing will make no sense, will be ridden with lacunae. Perhaps I could try to rewrite this text, revise it by replacing the words I always repeat with fresh new ones, words unburdened by my usage or that of others, but this task seems especially arduous, and I’m unconfident in my ability to conjure fresh new words. So I’ll continue with this exercise in subtraction, till the words dwindle toward zero. I do not know whether zero will mark an end or a new beginning. I am burning with envy at those unburdened by these repetitions, those who need no revisions, no cuts, no new beginnings, those who simply continue writing, unself-consciously, geniuses with perfectly selected words at their disposal. With each cross-out, I am disciplining myself, and it feels good and painful, like plucking wayward hairs, but I don’t know what I’m working toward. Toward an end, to be sure, that much is certain, for even if the end bears a new beginning it will still mark an end of sorts. I am looking at the text above and it is hideous. I am looking at my previous sentence and wondering why I redeploy this synonym for “ugly” so often in my writing. Perhaps all my words are autobiographical, and hideous is me. There are certain words—and I’ll allow myself to type them without cross-outs here, since I’m quoting them rather than recycling them—that I am wont to use over and over: horror, hideous, dread, dull, shudder, shiver, tedious…I could go on for a while, but the list is all too finite. Moreover, I shudder to imagine my reader not only discerning the smallness of my mind, but also psychoanalyzing me using this shameful constellation of words. For by psychoanalyzing me as well as knowing the smallness of my mind, the reader will discover me twice over, me, shamefully exhibited in my smallness, in my failure to not be exhibited. I am looking at the text above and wondering whether I’ve neglected to cross out certain words that deserved the axe, whether I’ve been failing in my little exercise, for I’ve only be crossing out the words that I remember repeatedly using, not the ones I reuse unconsciously, and this is the greatest peril and cause for writerly despair. Take the word “reuse.” I haven’t been crossing it out, but it certainly warrants the flatline. Reuse. It’s one thing to know one’s smallness and seek to rectify it, it’s quite another to be unaware of this smallness. Smallness! I am searching for another word that I won’t have to cross out, but I keep coming upon inapt synonyms, words that won’t do the trick, words that merely reconfirm the smallness of my word bank. Which words remain at my disposal? “I,” I suppose, a necessary pronoun, no one could accuse one of saying “I” too many times. But I search for a verb to follow it and come up empty. In my effort to subtract, it’s possible I may be adding up subtractions, that this little exercise might go onto infinity in a wretched (“wretched”! of course, add that to the old favorites) display of infinite smallness. The words will never expunge themselves if the point is simply to cancel them out. (And therefore my shame will remain.) One would need to annihilate the words, not simply cancel them out. I shudder and shiver with horror while contemplating this possibility, the possibility that these reused words might go on forever like the undead. Possibility! Cross it out! (Crossing out the above word, “possibility,” I suppose I’ve implicitly permitted myself to cross out earlier text from this very piece, which of course risks inviting all sorts of confusion, perhaps the retroactive crossing out of the whole thing. In which case, the distinction between crossing out words and leaving them exposed would become meaningless. But I cannot permit this, for distinctions, between the exposed and the crossed-out, are all I have left.) Possibilities! I am always writing about possibilities, as if the word could conjure the thing it refers to. But I am always failing to conjure the thing itself, remaining at the level of the repeated words. I am anxious that some words above have been left standing. The best way to prevent the shame is to end everything. How can I bring this to an end? Have I yet confronted the idea that, by bringing this to an end, I bring myself to an end, insofar as I am a writer? Did I not say that I am a writer? Have I faced my own death? Perhaps my death is not imminent. I will die when all the words are crossed out, but that seems pretty far in the future, not because I have so many interesting words at my disposal, but because the plain words seem to slip by my crossing-out procedure. But if I’m left with only plain words, then the reader will know the smallness of my mind, not through what I’ve repeated, but through the dross that remains, those words that can’t be classified as cliches or as repetitions but nonetheless fail to reveal an expansive mind. But perhaps I should read myself again, not just this present text, but all my previous work, and what I’ll see is I’ve used every single word in this present piece, every last one, and that, given that the future so often repeats the past, all future words would be promising candidates for the cross-out. I don’t have the courage to read my own body of work, however, to encounter my own smallness once again, so I’m going to institute a new rule. Whatever I write from here will all be crossed out, for I will stipulate, without combing through the tedious evidence, that I’ve run out of words and therefore that my mind has come to an end, and that it’s time to stop writing, and if I want to keep going I’ll have to do so without words, with only the purity of the crossing-out itself, ah the negation without negated content, what I’ve been seeking this entire time. I’m looking for a way to terminate my language, but perhaps the only way to end is in the middle, for to end in the beginning is to not exist, to end at the end means waiting forever (so long as infinite repetitions are allowed in the form of crossed-out text), but the middle, that’s it, the middle followed by the placid the horizontal line, the nameless middle, the arbitrary origin of the pure negation that must come. But I feel the middle lurching toward an end, and that end, of course, is my name, the name I’ve been neglecting even though I’ve repeated it so many times, the signature at the bottom, emblem of a uniqueness that has never been unique, that has been repetition from the beginning. But to end with the negated name is itself shameful in its pretension, so self-aggrandizing in its performance of deprecation…I ran out of words while trying to complete the previous sentence, but looking back at it I see the cure to all my ills, the ellipsis of course, the middle that doesn’t lurch toward an end but inscribes the end within itself, the end of the cross-out, all I’ve ever wanted, all I………………………………………………………………………
Martin Rayburn is a poet and short fiction writer based in Northern California. Since receiving his PhD in English in 2018, he has been teaching, reading, and writing literature, hoping to inspire students, colleagues, and a wider public.
Photo Credit: Hoach Le Dinh on Unsplash
L'Esprit Literary Review 