Consequences and Chocolate Brownies

When I was younger, my friends and I used to play a game called Consequences with basically included a piece of paper each, a pen each and a hefty amount of imagination. The idea was to write down a boys name and then fold the paper over so that the name couldn't be seen and pass it on. The next person would write a girls name and do the same. The pieces of paper would travel around the circle and each time the next person would add another detail in the following order: a boy's name, a girl's name, where they met, what the boy said, what the girl said, and what happened in the end. Of course, with so many different people in the circle you could get the strangest things coming out; celebrities meeting people in the room, murders, rampant sex. You name it, it was in there. I recall one particularly vivid occasion with an octopus...

We were thinking today, in meta-fictions about the idea of shared authorship and how it helps to dispel the writer's "control-freakery". I am beginning to realise just how little control I will have over my own work when it leaves and flies into the world of literature. It'll be picked apart by people. They'll see and seek out meanings that I never intended. They'll read it in a light that I think vile. They'll comment that my characters are boring, without motive. And what will I be able to do? Nothing, that's what. Who would I be to tell them how to feel in the first place?

This, of course, is a scary prospect for any writer. Letting go of one's work is a bit like seeing a child off to school for the first time, deep down you know they're ready, but you're not sure people will be nice to them, you want them to make friends and become educated, but that's not always the case, and you know it.

All this called for chocolate brownies. That, and a rather large headache that had been growing out of my suddenly onset cold, prompted a chocolate brownie. I thought it would make me feel better, I mean sugar should've helped, seeing as I had skipped lunch due to lecture placement. But it didn't really. I guess this is just one more argument for eating healthily instead of compulsively. Still, that icing on top was worth it. Delicious.