This is the title story from my collection “Nothing To See Here.”
Hi everyone, I’m Matt, and I want to be a writer. I’ve been coming to this group for a few months now, and I still haven’t written anything presentable. Everyone says you should write about what you know, but I don’t really know much. I’ve lived my whole life in this boring little town, with my boring parents, and I have a boring job in real estate, and nothing ever happens round here that I could write about.
I mean, here’s how a typical day goes for me.
I wake up in the morning…
… and nothing has changed.
I eat breakfast with my mum and dad…
… who haven’t been replaced by aliens overnight…
… and I feed the cat…
… who isn’t a demon in disguise and isn’t about to die in some heart-breaking way that would bring us all closer together as a family, because God knows, we need it.
I get dressed…
… in perfectly ordinary clothes that have no magical properties and don’t make me invisible or give me superpowers…
… and I go to work…
… where I don’t discover that my boss is secretly laundering money for a crime syndicate and that the FBI are planning to raid the office.
I show a bunch of houses…
… none of which is haunted, or the scene of a grisly murder, or a portal to another dimension…
… to a bunch of boring people…
… who aren’t in witness protection or looking for a place to set up a weird cult.
At lunchtime, I eat my sandwiches by the lake…
… which doesn’t have a monster in it, and hasn’t been contaminated with toxic sludge by an evil corporation who don’t care about the environmental havoc they’re causing.
I walk back through the graveyard…
… which doesn’t have zombies or a fairy ring in it…
… to the used bookstore…
… which isn’t run by a shrunken old man who might be a gnome, and doesn’t contain any long-lost treasure maps, ancient grimoires, or books with letters tucked into the flyleaf that are a clue to some local mystery.
I get home and check the mail…
… which doesn’t include a letter from a lawyer telling me I’ve inherited a fortune or a spooky house from someone I’ve never heard of.
I have dinner with my parents…
… who aren’t getting a divorce or cheating on each other…
… and then we watch TV for a bit until it’s time to go to bed…
… which has no monsters under it.
And that’s another day in my totally boring life…
… in which nobody got murdered, nobody got abducted, nobody fulfilled their lifelong dream of opening a chocolate shop, nobody met the love of their life, and the circus didn’t come to town.
So, yeah, I have nothing to write about. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Because I do, really, really want to be a writer. Thank you.
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