The Lazy Novelist's Rough Draft

Chapter One

"Where have you been?"
"Oh, you know."
"Did you meet..."
"What's-his-name?  Yep, and that friend of his, Miss Thing."
"So what happened?"
"Don't get me started."
"I can just imagine it!"
"You don't know the half of it.  Words can't begin to describe what I went through with those two."
"You don't mean..."
"You read my mind."
"Say no more."

I woke up in a panic, having dreamed about the rise of the short sentence phasing out semicolons.

Then I dreamed about a refrigerator.  On it was "an article called 'The Endangered Semicolon' (held there by a magnet shaped like the also-endangered red wolf)," just as in Julia Glass's THREE JUNES.

Earlier that night, I dreamt of Manderley.

Saint Lieblos
Patron of Involuntary Celibacy.

Watchful over many a loveless marriage, Saint Lieblos penned the well-known tract entitled "Divine Relief from Sleeplessness: A Missionary's Position."

Coat Change

What do Erasmus, this solitary English tower, and these colorful dancers have in common?

The answer: Each is in praise of folly. The tower is an example of "architectural folly," the dancers are from Ziegfield's Follies, and Erasmus wrote Praise of Folly.  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Saint Pfennig
Patron of the Intrinsically Useless.

Saint Pfennig oversees things devoid of purpose, such as motor boat racing, camping, public works, and vandalism.  In some cultures, he is associated with the inexplicable and the totally misunderstood.  In others, he is patron of unaskable and unrelated questions.  Paintings of him (often sanctimoniously vandalized) usually depict him "hovering all too near the angelic pleroma of total meaninglessness," to quote Mac Wellman out of context.  Traditional offerings to Saint Pfennig include copper pennies, trinkets, ornaments, and governmental reports.

Reader Comments:

Jonathan wrote:
Saint Pfennig!  Perfect concept, perfect name.  And the Dadaesque paradigm of sanctimonious vandalization -- great!

"Who died and made you God?"  Buddha did, for example, teaching that anyone could do anything he could do.

Saint Futilis
Patron of Quiet Desperation.

Best known for his "Litany of a Thousand Muted Cries for Help," Saint Futilis' sermons were famously punctuated by angry silences.  Futilis eventually founded a  monastery, "The Brothers of Unspeakable Loneliness" (a.k.a. "Nothing Really Martyrs"), where the daily rounds of prayer were known as "Counting the Minutes."  Overcome with feelings of meaninglessness after Futilis' death, the monks never mustered the wherewithal to disband, though the Church officially renounced them after misinterpreting a manifesto entitled "Our Resignation."

SONG: Slow Motion
ARTIST: Blondie

ORIGINAL LYRIC:

Slow motion you can stop on a dime
Slow motion you ought to try it sometime

ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION:

Slow motion you sedately escort her
Slow motion you ought to lend her a quarter

I'm mad at my friend the cook. 

He only calls me when he's in a jam.

Cheating

I dreamed I had corrective surgery to turn my comma half into a period.  Now I was a colon.  I stood proudly before explanations, examples, definitions, restatements, recapitulations, quotations, appositives, and lists.

Then I dreamed about a bunch of "perplexing semicolons," as in THE LINE OF BEAUTY by Alan Hollinghurst.