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– Come on, just quickly.
She put her English textbook on the table and pointed her finger at the words circled in pencil.
– Here are these, translate them.
Peter opened a translator in his browser and began to type English words into it one by one, the translation of which immediately appeared in the next column. The sister wrote down the translation, and then the sound of the word.
Peter fiddled with translating the words for about fifteen minutes, and completely lost the essence of what he was thinking about before.
– Thank you. – said the sister when she wrote down the translation of all the words.
– You’re welcome. – Peter called out.
Christina left the room and closed the door.
Peter returned to his book.
– Write a plot, or try to write how it goes. – he thought. – I’ll see what they write on the Internet.
He entered the desired phrase into the search and began reading manuals for aspiring authors, where they wrote about how best to start writing a book. Most were inclined to believe that the book should be written according to plan. This was justified by the fact that if you write without a plan, you can forget what the book is about, lose the plot line, and in the end, simply abandon everything.
– Well, okay, if I abandon it, then it’s not fate. – Peter thought, and opening the program in which he was going to write a book, he wrote the title in large letters: «THE DEVIL IN THE WORDS.» It looked impressive.
He took the mug, wanting to take a couple more sips of coffee, but the mug was empty. Then he got up from the computer and went to the kitchen. There was no one in the kitchen. He calmly poured himself some coffee and went back to the computer. The mood was working. Now, when the title of the book was ready, it seemed that the main work had already been done, and a little more, and the book would be ready, but not just a book, but a real bestseller that would sell millions of copies and make Peter one of the most successful writers. And then, for sure, he will have everything, a house, a car, and things that he wanted to buy, but could not, due to the fact that he was unemployed.
A dog ran into the room – a small pug that wanted to play. She grabbed onto Peter’s slipper and began to pull it from side to side, wanting the owner of the slipper to play with it.
– No, Motya, leave me alone, I won’t play with you, don’t, go play with mom or Christina.
But the dog did not lag behind. Then Peter took off his slippers and put them on the table. Motya sat down next to the chair and stared at Peter.
– I won’t play with you, just go. – he said, motioning with his hand for the dog to leave the room, but it continued to sit motionless and look at Peter.
Peter could not stand it, got up from the table, picked up the dog in his arms, and carried him out of the room. Having lowered it to the floor in the corridor, he returned back to the room and closed the door.
– Where did I stop… oh yes, the devil is in the words. – he said quietly, replaying all the previous thoughts in his head. – This will be a book about a writer. But this will not be just a book, it will be a real motivation for all aspiring writers who ever decide to write a book. Yes.
Having decided what the book would be about, Peter began to figure out where to start it. But absolutely nothing came to mind.
– The hero will be called Peter. – he thought, coming up with the main character. – Why complicate everything? The book is about Peter, who writes about a writer named Peter. Simple and clear. It’s like putting two mirrors opposite each other. Am I not a genius? Peter, who writes about Peter, who writes about Peter. And so on ad infinitum. One writer writes about another writer who writes about a writer. There’s definitely something to this. So, in St. Petersburg there lived a young man who dreamed of becoming a writer.
Peter wrote the first few sentences of the book. But the thought did not go beyond the idea. He sat for about an hour on the first paragraph, but still couldn’t come up with anything.
Deciding to pour another mug of coffee, he went to the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator, he discovered that the milk had run out.
– The milk has run out. – he said when his mother entered the kitchen.
– So go get him.
– Give me money.
– Just give it, give it. How old are you now to still walk around with your hand outstretched and ask me for money? I could go and earn money myself.
Peter did not answer anything, but only harbored a grudge somewhere deep down. They were driven by dreams. He could not come to terms with the fact that he would have to work at a factory, live like everyone else, and be content with little. He wanted more, he wanted to reach out to Hollywood stars, he wanted to be part of the star society, part of those people who have yachts, cars, luxury houses, and who receive millions in fees for their works.
– Here you go, buy two bottles. – said the mother, putting a hundred rubles on the table.
Peter went into the room and put on his pants and jacket. Leaving the room, he took a hundred rubles, put on his sneakers, left the apartment, closed the door, and went outside. Sun was shining. It was the end of September. There were several cars parked in the yard. Children played on the playground, and their mothers sat on benches reading magazines and books. Some sat bent over their phones.
Having reached the store, Peter went inside. He took the basket and immediately headed to the dairy department. There he ran into a girl from his building. She recognized him, it was obvious, they had seen each other more than once, but had never spoken. She drove an expensive car, apparently worked for some large company, and had recently acquired a young man who visited her from time to time. Peter liked her. He would like to approach her, but he was very embarrassed about his situation. Now, if he sold at least one book, as he thought, and made money from it, he could call himself a writer, and then he could approach her. But he was unemployed, and her car cost a million and a half, no less, and she looked quite serious. She didn’t look like the kind of girl you could just walk up to, like some schoolgirl at a school disco.
Peter made an important appearance and walked into the dairy department. There he found milk on sale, for which he had just enough money, and took two bottles. He went to the checkout with the milk. His next door neighbor was standing there. He pretended that he didn’t know her. He just stood behind him and put the milk on the moving belt. The neighbor looked at him, she clearly wanted to say hello, but did not do so.
The cashier knocked the milk.
– Ninety-nine rubles.
Peter took out a «one hundred ruble» bill from his pants pocket and handed it to the cashier. She took it, put it in the cash register, and took out a «one ruble» coin from there, giving it to Peter.
Having taken the coin, Peter took both bottles of milk and went home. He carried the bottles in his hands, since he did not have enough money for a package.
Returning home, he put the milk in the refrigerator and immediately turned on the electric kettle to pour himself some coffee. While the kettle was heating up, he went into the room, took off his street clothes, and returned to the kitchen with his mug.
The water in the kettle was just boiling.
Having poured sugar and coffee into a mug, Peter poured hot boiling water over everything, stirred thoroughly, and added milk.
Leaving the teaspoon in the kitchen, he returned to the room and sat down at the computer, in which the office program in which he was writing a book was open. Only one paragraph was written.
Having tried to continue writing the book, Peter realized that he would not succeed. Then he closed the office program and went on a social network to read something interesting about writers. He was a member of several groups, one of which published his short, fantastic story based on a computer game.
While drinking coffee, he began to look through the pages of the groups, which had quite a few posts. But none of them gave food for thought, none of them gave ideas. Then Peter turned on the music and tried to relax to find some inspiration.
CHAPTER 2. First chapters
Morning. My sister was getting ready for school, rustling her clothes and backpack in the hallway. Peter opened his eyes and froze, looking at one point on the pillow. There was no desire to get up, and there was nowhere to go. At some point, he felt like a worthless creature who didn’t even have a job. He closed his eyes and after a few moments fell asleep again.
Waking up later, he stretched and reluctantly crawled out from under the blanket. There was silence in the apartment. Lowering his feet to the floor, he put on his slippers and went to the computer. Taking a smartphone with a crack on the screen, he turned it on and looked at the time. It was half past twelve in the afternoon. Putting the smartphone back on the table, Peter took the mug and went to the kitchen to pour himself some coffee. Motya immediately ran up to him. Peter did not immediately understand what the dog wanted from him, but when he reached the kitchen, he realized that she was thirsty. Leaving the mug on the table, he took the teapot and went to her bowl. Having poured water into it, Peter returned to the kitchen, added tap water to the kettle and, placing it on the stand, turned it on.
The sun was shining outside the window.
Peter opened the refrigerator and looked at the food that was inside, trying to figure out what to cook for breakfast. His mother did not like the fact that Peter did not work and constantly ate at her expense. Therefore, she put some products in the bottom drawer so that Peter would not take them.
Taking two eggs and one sausage from the refrigerator, Peter went to the stove, lit the gas, put a frying pan on it, after which he crumbled the sausage into it and drove two eggs into it. Closing the pan with a lid, he went to get a mug to pour some coffee.
My head was empty. No ideas, no interesting thoughts, nothing at all, just an empty desire to drink coffee and eat scrambled eggs.
Taking a mug from the table, Peter poured sugar and coffee into it, after which he poured hot water from the kettle, which had just boiled, over everything and stirred thoroughly. Leaving the mug on the table, he took milk out of the refrigerator, added a little to the coffee, put the bottle back in the refrigerator, and once again stirred the coffee, which was now with milk.
He sat down on a chair and took a few small sips from his mug. Fried eggs were sizzling in the frying pan. Taking the plastic remote control, Peter turned on the TV. One of the channels was showing his favorite series about witches. He thought that he could also write something about witches, but this had already happened, and it turned out that he did not invent anything of his own, but only borrowed other people’s ideas.
– Where do all these writers get their ideas? Am I really so mediocre that I can’t come up with anything interesting? – thought Peter.
Leaving the coffee mug on the table, he went into the room to turn on the computer. Having pressed the button on the system unit, he returned back to the kitchen and turned off the gas under the frying pan. The scrambled eggs were ready. He put it on a small plate, after which he took ketchup out of the refrigerator and squeezed some into the scrambled eggs. Putting the bottle of ketchup back in the refrigerator, Peter took a plate of scrambled eggs, a mug of coffee, and went into the room.
The computer booted.
Peter sat down in the computer chair, put breakfast on the table, and connected the Internet. Going to his social network page, he looked at the messages. There were no new ones. Breaking off a piece of scrambled eggs, he stuck it on a fork and put it in his mouth, beginning to chew thoroughly.
– I should probably wash my face. – Peter thought when his drooping eyes began to prevent him from reading posts in social network groups.
Leaving the scrambled eggs and coffee on the table, he went to the bathroom, where he thoroughly washed his face and brushed his teeth. Returning to the computer, he continued his breakfast.
There wasn’t much to read. There was nothing new in the news, and the jokes that were published in the groups were repeated again and again, and each time they became less and less funny.
Peter quickly ate the scrambled eggs, washed it down with coffee, and took the plate to the kitchen, putting it in the sink. Returning to his room and sitting down at the computer, he tried to think about the book he had started writing. He opened the office program in which he had written the first paragraph of the book and re-read it. To his disappointment, he did not find anything brilliant or talented in this paragraph.
– What if I don’t have literary talent? What if I’m completely untalented? – thought Peter, looking at the few lines that hovered on the screen under the large heading: «THE DEVIL IN THE WORDS.»
He got up from his chair and went to the window. Pulling back the curtain, he looked into the backyard, where there were many poplar trees and cars parked on the side of the road. He lived on the first floor, and looked up at the trees, which created the feeling that the house was almost in the forest.
Peter tried to come up with the first chapter, to spin a plot in his head that he could use for his book. Alas, there was no plot.
He returned to the computer, sat down in his chair, took a sip of coffee, and opened the website where the most prolific authors were published. Among the most prolific, Peter discovered those who wrote over one thousand novels.
– A thousand novels! – Peter exclaimed, peering at the numbers and trying to imagine what so many books could be written about. After all, he himself could not come up with a plot for even one, and there, one man, wrote a thousand books.
He took another sip of his coffee, trying to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t a genius. After all, if he were a genius, he could easily figure out what to write about at least the first chapter of his book.
Turning on his favorite song, he leaned back in his chair and threw his hands behind his head, beginning to reflect on the plot of the book. Basically, he imagined that he wanted to write a book about a writer who writes a book, and then it gets picked up by a publisher, and the writer makes a ton of money from it. But he had absolutely no idea what to fill the chapters with. After all, an idea is literally a couple of lines, and each chapter should be several pages long. Publishers took at least eight author’s pages to print books, which is almost two hundred and fifty pages of text. Peter didn’t want to write a story; ideally, it should have been a novel, or at least a small book that wouldn’t look like a brochure from a newsstand.
As time went. Peter sat at the computer and wrote down a few sentences from time to time. The text of the book grew. The second and third paragraphs appeared. Peter even thought that if he wrote at such a speed, he could finish a whole chapter in a day. It was only necessary to catch the impulse of inspiration. Some authors wrote twenty novels a year, which is almost two novels a month, that is, at least one thousand pages of text per month. It was quite possible to write one chapter in a day, and moreover, Peter felt that he could do it.
He gathered all his thoughts into one and began to write. Lines began to appear on a white sheet of paper on the monitor. Dialogues and scenes appeared, characters began to do something, they began to come to life, becoming not just text, but characters who had their own desires and thoughts.
In a burst of inspiration, Peter sat at the computer until lunch. He managed to write an entire chapter in literally three hours. The chapter was small, only two and a half thousand words, but for Peter it was a real achievement, he felt the strength to create. However, there was no plot as such yet. He simply wrote down what came to his mind.
The sound of keys clicking came from the corridor. My sister returned from school. Motya ran out into the corridor to meet her. She took off her briefcase and went to her room. Peter watched her through the slightly open door.
Taking the mug, he noticed that it was out of coffee. He got up from the table and went to the kitchen to pour something new.
Turning on the kettle, he poured sugar and coffee into the mug, and when the kettle boiled, he poured hot water over everything, adding milk at the end.
He returned to the room, but his sister was already sitting at the computer, heatedly discussing something on a social network.
– Now I’m sitting at the computer. – she said, typing a message.
Peter put the coffee mug on the table and went to the kitchen to watch TV.
There was still a series about witches on TV. It was shown almost all day. Peter sat down at the table, leaned his elbows on his hands, and began to watch him. Several episodes were shown a day. Most of them repeated, adding only one new one per day. Peter looked thoughtfully at the TV, but it was obvious that his thoughts were somewhere else.
After half an hour, he couldn’t stand it anymore and went into the room to get his computer back. Sitting on a chair in the kitchen was not as comfortable as sitting in a chair at the computer.
– How long are you going to be? – he asked, turning to his sister.
– I don’t know, I need to wait for an answer.
– How long will you wait for him?
«I’m telling you, I don’t know.»
Peter went back to the kitchen. He returned to the table and continued watching the series. He remembered seeing the books that the series was based on and thought that maybe he should write something like the series too. It seemed easier to write that way. But these thoughts still did not solve the main problem; they did not give ideas on what to fill the chapters with. The idea could be embodied in a story, put into a few pages, write that there was such and such a guy who wrote such and such a book, and then it was published, and he made a lot of money. But it was a story. Story! Not a book. No one has ever made money from stories, and not many have made money from books.
– I’ll write one chapter a day, and in about twenty days I’ll just finish it. – Peter thought, pondering his book. – The main thing is to have a desire to write. Although, perhaps, you should treat this as work, not wait for the desire to appear, but just write. But what if no lines are written at all? Give up everything? Admit to yourself that you are mediocre and have no literary inclinations? What about dreams? You won’t be able to come to terms with the fact that you will never have anything. Think about it, where else can you make money? You will end up as a loader at some factory, where you will work from morning to evening. And all that will happen in your life is a bottle of beer and computer games. – He put his head on the table. – No, you can’t do that, I have to think of something. I have to find a way to make a ton of money, but how?
My sister came into the kitchen. She had a textbook, notebook and pen in her hands.
– Help me do the math.
– Let’s go to.
Together they went to Peter’s room. The sister sat down in a chair and put the notebook on the table, giving the textbook to her brother. He took it and began to read the problem. Having read it completely, he comprehended everything that was said in it, and began to dictate a decision to his sister. She began to write it down in her notebook.
Peter was tired of standing with a textbook in his hands; he would rather sit down at the computer and continue working on the book, or at least search the Internet for some useful articles or blog posts that would help him write. He tried to solve problems from the textbook as quickly as possible, dictating solutions to his sister.
Having finished doing math, Christina got out from behind the computer and, taking a textbook and notebook, went to her room. Peter sat down in a chair. It was a moment of relief. He was so used to his chair that he received incredible pleasure from being in it. Everything in his room was done in such a way as to enjoy comfort, which Peter valued very much. He bought all his things when he worked at the factory. He worked there for a couple of months, and was just able to save money to buy a computer, a sofa, and a computer chair, not to mention other small things, such as a table, a bedside table and a carpet.
Working at the factory seemed like absolute hell to him. He hated the whole world when he was carrying heavy sheets of iron, or dragging them from the truck to the workshop. But there was nowhere to go. He woke up in the morning and, trying not to think about fatigue, went to work. Walking down the street, he tried not to notice cars and people who, as he believed, lived much better than him. They were happy, it was evident from their smiles. And anger accumulated in him. He never wanted to answer questions about why he was so sad or dissatisfied. He had no reason to be pleased. He wanted a yacht, he wanted a car, he wanted a separate apartment and a life, the same as the one that Hollywood stars had, but instead, a factory.
When he quit his job, he had no regrets. Of course, he understood that his mother would be unhappy, that she would be angry with him and let all the dogs go the first time, but he could not continue to work, his dreams were too colorful. He didn’t just dream, he believed that he deserved a better life.
– Do you have money? – asked the sister, entering Peter’s room.
– No. Where do I get them from?
– OK. I will go for a walk.
– Okay, go ahead.
The sister left the room. Keys jingled in the corridor, a clicking sound was heard in the lock, after which the door opened. Christina went out into the entrance and closed the door behind her. Peter was left alone in the apartment.
– Almost four o’clock in the afternoon. Maybe try writing another chapter? – thought Peter, looking at his watch. – Why not.
He opened the office program in which he wrote the book and continued writing. At first the text was difficult, there were no ideas for a new chapter, but after half an hour, Peter signed, and the glory began to appear on its own. Text began to appear on the empty sheets of the monitor, filling them.
Peter did not notice how four hours had passed. He realized this when the front door opened. Getting up from the computer, he looked out into the corridor. It was the mother. In her hands was a bag filled with groceries.
– Did you buy anything for tea? – Peter asked, turning to his mother.
