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– Yes, I bought it. Go and unpack the package.
Peter went out into the corridor, took a bag of groceries from his mother, and went to the kitchen. He pulled out all the food and put it in the refrigerator. A package of chocolate wafers was bought for tea. Peter opened it and took three strips. He returned to the room and sat back down at the computer. Taking a bite from the waffle strip, he took a mug to wash down the waffle with coffee, but the mug was empty.
Putting the waffles aside, he went to the kitchen to pour some coffee. He did this quite quickly, trying once again not to catch the eye of his mother, who at that time was fastening the leash on the dog’s body to take her out for a walk.
– Close the door behind me. – she said, since closing the door with a leash in her hand was inconvenient.
Peter took the keys and went to the front door. The mother left the apartment and he closed the door behind her.
Together with the keys, he returned to the room, sat down in a chair, put the keys down, took a bite of the waffle, and washed down the coffee. A mild taste spread throughout the mouth. He glanced at the monitor, looked at the text, then at the word count. The second chapter was finished. A feeling of self-satisfaction and joy reigned in the mind. But, despite the fact that the second chapter was finished, the whole book was still ahead. It is unknown how many chapters will need to be written for the book to look complete. Maybe twenty, maybe thirty. But where do you get ideas for so many chapters? This was probably the main question that tormented Peter. But now, he tried not to think about it, the main thing was that he had finished the second chapter. Five thousand words were over. It was a small segment of the entire journey, but it was very significant. Yes, Peter was not the same genius as those who wrote several hundred novels during their lives. But Peter believed that if he managed to write at least one book, it would certainly become a bestseller and bring him good money, with which he could buy everything he loved to dream about.
CHAPTER 3. A walk in the park
– Take a walk with Motya today. – said the mother, getting ready for work.
Peter was in the kitchen, pouring himself some coffee to cheer himself up. It was not early morning, about eleven o’clock. Usually at that time his mother left for work. My sister was already at school. Only he, alone, did not go anywhere, and did not do anything except wander around the house all day. At least that’s what his mother, sister, and all those who knew about him thought. But Peter himself thought differently. He believed that he was on his way to becoming a rich and famous man. He believed that he would be able to write a book, that his book would be loved, and that he would be able to earn good money from it, which would be enough for him to buy a separate home, a car, and a girlfriend, whom he did not have.
– Okay. – Peter answered, pouring hot water from the kettle into the coffee and sugar.
The mother packed her things, took the keys, and left the apartment. Peter was left alone, with Motya, who climbed onto a bench in the corridor and, curled up in a ball, began to doze. She often did this, but as soon as some sound was heard on the landing, she immediately jumped up and began to howl, so much so that everyone immediately ran to calm her down so that he would stop barking.
Having stirred the coffee and added milk, Peter took the mug and stood in front of the window, watching the rare passers-by who went about their business. Peter felt a little uneasy because he had nothing to do. He felt like a parasite, a parasite, almost a scum of society. However, after taking a sip of coffee, all negative thoughts disappeared at once. He remembered the book and imagined that he was not a parasite at all, but a writer. Yes, he didn’t work, yes, he rarely left the house, yes, he had practically no friends, but all this did not stop him from living in his own world, which seemed to him much more interesting than the one outside the window. Although, it is unlikely that his world would find at least some understanding among people. He was unemployed, and this was enough to consider him unworthy of attention.
Together with the mug, Peter went into the room where he sat down at the computer. Placing the mug next to the monitor, he opened the office program in which he wrote his book. Scrolling to the bottom of the text, he wrote the subtitle: «CHAPTER THREE.»
– Can lighten up a boring text with some action? – thought Peter, trying to come up with a new chapter. – Let’s say Peter was writing a book, and then, unexpectedly, aliens fly to earth. Thousands of spaceships descend on the planet and hover over cities. This is an invasion, nothing less. Everyone is trying to escape, and Peter finds himself in the thick of things, he becomes a hero who needs to save the world from foreign invaders. Why not? But on the other hand, I’m writing a book about a writer, just a boring book, where a guy will write a book, why add to the plot everything that thousands of pages of text are already written about? Yes, bad idea. I’d rather not add anything fantastic and mystical. It was still not enough to insert into the plot about the writer, some vampires, or werewolves. No, it won’t be anything like that, just a boring book. The book should be boring, it’s not a movie. Also, what if I’m an intellectual and my book is intellectual? All intellectual literature must be boring. I don’t know what the reader needs. Maybe what readers want to read is a boring book with a boring guy doing boring things. I play roulette. I am writing a book, but whether it will be published and whether millions of copies of this very book will be sold is not up to me.
Peter threw all thoughts about aliens, demons and vampires out of his head, leaving only boring thoughts about the gray everyday life of a young man who wanted to get rich. He tried to imagine his hero, tried to get into his head, to understand what he could think about, what he could want, what he could dream about. In the end, Peter simply thought about what he himself was thinking about, thinking about his own dreams. After all, the main character of his book, in fact, was himself.
– How difficult it is. And no one can guarantee that anyone will read the book at all. I can sit on it for a month, or two, or six months, and then some unfortunate critic will say: «There are too many mental verbs in it, I don’t like that.» And it doesn’t matter who this person was, and whether he understands at least something in literature, he just doesn’t like mental verbs, because some writer said that you shouldn’t use mental verbs in books, that it’s bad, that you need give the reader a picture. Yes, I’m probably just not so brilliant as to convey all the thoughts of a character in pictures and actions. The book is about one person, only one, who writes a book, and how can one not use mental verbs? – Peter thought indignantly. All he had was his thoughts, and these thoughts needed to be reflected on paper somehow. – Well, it can’t be that I’m so mediocre! In any case, there will be someone who will like my boring book. Even if someone says that she is boring, I deliberately intend her to be boring. What’s important here is the story, not the events that happen in that story. Maybe my hero will spend the entire book sitting at the computer, what now? Such a book, such an idea, such a plan that the main character will spend the entire book in the apartment writing a book. It will just be a boring book about a writer.
Peter drank all the coffee that was in the mug in one gulp and, getting up from the computer, went to the kitchen to pour another one.
Going out into the corridor, he noticed Motya, who was lying on the bench. He remembered that his mother asked him to take a walk with her.
– Later. – Peter said quietly and walked into the kitchen.
Turning on the electric kettle, he poured coffee and sugar into a mug, took milk out of the refrigerator, and sat down at the table, waiting for the water in the kettle to boil.
Peter was thinking about the book. He was trying to come up with a plot for the third chapter. The idea came on its own, and unexpectedly. He simply decided to describe his day, just one day in his life. Write about how he drinks coffee, how he walks the dog, how he washes his face in the morning. After all, it was his book, and he could write whatever he wanted in it. Yes, he took a risk, because publishers love books in series. They love books that have an exciting plot, and the plot of his book was as boring as his every day.
The water in the kettle boiled. Peter rose from his chair, took the kettle, and poured hot water over the coffee. Having thoroughly stirred the coffee and sugar, he added milk to the mug. Having put the milk in the refrigerator, he took a mug of coffee and went back to the computer, promising Mota that he would go for a walk with her later.
Sitting down at the computer, Peter put the mug next to the monitor and, pulling the keyboard towards him, began to write. He started in the morning. I just remembered one day from my life, took some fragments from it, and began to write it down. Words began to appear on the monitor. One, two, a whole sentence, and then a whole paragraph, and now the first page is finished. It seemed that inspiration had found the writer, but, alas, after five hundred words, everything stopped. Peter re-read the text. It seems that he wrote everything he wanted, but at the same time, there was too little written. Only five hundred words, but the chapter needed at least two thousand.
All thoughts disappeared.
Opening the browser, Peter entered his social network page. There were no new messages, but in the news everything was the same as a month ago.
– What to write about anyway? – thought Peter, staring at the monitor. – Although, why am I, I can just take ideas from my life, take any ideas. And even more, I can invent things that are not in my life. For example, I can come up with a friend for the main character with whom he will go to drink beer. Or he will go to a restaurant to eat a hamburger. I can write anything. The main thing is that the events do not contradict themselves, and that it is not boring. But, stop, I’m writing a boring book, then I can write about boring, hackneyed, annoying things.
The door of the room opened. Peter looked down and saw Motya, who entered the room and sat down next to the computer chair.
– Okay, now let’s go for a walk. – said Peter.
Turning on the music, he got up from the computer and began to get dressed. He put on his pants, changed into his t-shirt, put on his shirt, then put on his sneakers. Approaching the window, he stuck out his hand to see if it was warm outside. It was warm outside, and what’s more, the sun was shining there. And without even putting your hand out of the window, you could understand that it was warm there.
Turning off the computer, Peter put a harness on Motya, attached a leash to it and, taking his smartphone and keys, went outside. Leaving the apartment, he closed the door. Motya started barking. Her barking echoed through the entrance, causing Peter to almost tremble. This was one of the characteristics of his dog; she always barked terribly when she went out for a walk.
Leaving the entrance, Peter headed to the park, which was located a hundred meters from the scrap. You just had to cross two roads. Motya ran ahead, stopping near every bush and sniffing it.
An expensive car drove into the yard. Peter looked at him longingly, he wanted to have the same one, but he didn’t even have money to go to the movies. But he was not upset, because he was writing a book, and he believed that when he wrote it, he would definitely sell it in large quantities.
Having let the car pass, Peter walked further towards the park. He crossed the first road, taking Motya on a short leash, and then walked along the lawn, about a hundred meters, and crossed the second road, the traffic on which was more intense than on the first. Immediately behind the road there was a park with a large pond and many apple trees. The park also had an asphalt road, round in shape, the size of the entire park. You could often see girls and boys going out there to run a couple of laps. This day was no exception. Several girls were running along the road, with toned figures, wearing tight pants and T-shirts.
Peter sighed heavily, staring at them.
– I wish I could meet at least one of them. – he thought, looking at their slender waists and rounded hips.
Motya pulled him to the side, along the path. Peter followed her, leaving the running girls behind. He left the main road and followed the path behind Motya, which continued to pull him forward.
– Every moment of this can be taken into a book. – Peter thought. – Absolutely everyone. You can take into the book all these people, all these paths, and even all these apple trees that grow around. But will this be of interest to anyone? This is a classic. Just life, without exaggeration, without a sharp plot, without lyrics and fantasy. A true classic. What if I really can become a classic?
Peter’s chest filled with air. He was so inspired by his thoughts that his condition could be compared to schizophrenia, because now he imagines himself to be an outstanding classicist, capable of writing a novel no worse than those of the most outstanding classics of the world. He was ready to return home and create, write, fill pages with text, create new events, new moments, new thoughts. But first, it was necessary to walk at least one lap around the park so that Motya could do all her business.
A warm light wind was blowing. The sun was hot. Girls were running along the asphalt road, children were rollerblading and riding bicycles, and people with dogs were walking along the lawns. Peter walked along the path, not far from the roadway, completely immersed in thoughts about his book. Although most of his thoughts were still not about the book, but about how much he could earn from it. Million? Or maybe two? What if the book sells a million copies, and from each copy he receives fifty rubles? Fifty million? Peter’s heart began to beat faster.
– This is a game with fate, a game with luck. After all, no one can say for sure whether my book will be popular or how many copies will be sold. – Peter thought. – It’s like playing roulette. I ’m writing a book, and I’m setting it free to float, and then, depending on your luck. It happens that people find treasures, or win the lottery. Yes, it’s like winning the lottery. I’m writing a book and starting my lottery game. Whether I will be able to promote my book among thousands of other books, and whether people will buy it, no one knows.
A girl rode past Peter on a bicycle. Peter stared after her. Her figure drove him crazy. He really wanted to catch up with her, and get to know her, start a relationship with her, take her to the movies, and then to a restaurant, and then marry her, have children, and what not flashed through Peter’s head as he looked after the charming of a girl who rode past him on a bicycle. But he could not do this, because he had no money. Anger at the whole world awakened in him.
– Why me? There are so many people around, and everyone has cars, money, relationships. Do I have anything? Why am I worse than others? – he turned it over in his head, looking around. – What a fate.
He walked around the park and went back to the house. Motya continued to sniff all the bushes that came along the way. Peter’s mood dropped somewhat. He even forgot about the book. He was depressed by the fact that he had nothing, not even a job, while others had everything he dreamed of.
Coming out of the park, he took Motya on a short leash and crossed the road. Then he walked to the next road and crossed it. Having reached the entrance, he opened the door with a magnetic key and went inside. Climbing the steps, he reached the door of the apartment, opened it with the key, and entered. In the hallway lay the backpack of my sister, who had already returned from school.
Peter took off Moti’s harness, and she ran into the room. Taking off his sneakers, he entered his room. My sister was sitting at the computer and watching videos of famous bloggers. Peter stopped and looked at the monitor. The sister stopped the video.
– Don’t look. – she said.
– Why can’t I look? I’m interested too.
– Don’t look, just leave, why did you come?
– Actually, I live here.
– Go sit in the kitchen.
Peter took off his street clothes, put on his home T-shirt, took a mug with some coffee left in it, and went to the kitchen. There he turned on the TV, and sitting down at the table, began to switch channels, looking for something interesting. He stopped on a channel that showed a series about witches, which he really liked. He again began to think about writing a book about witches. But he immediately discarded them, because he was already writing a book, and he decided for himself that there would be no witches, no werewolves, or aliens in it.
Peter sat in the kitchen for about an hour while his sister watched bloggers on his computer. He drank two mugs of coffee, and even got tired of the chair he was sitting on. Sitting in a chair at the computer was much more comfortable and pleasant, and my back didn’t get tired there.
– I’m done. – said the sister, going out into the kitchen. – You can go to the computer.
– Excellent. – Peter called, and got up from the table, took a mug of coffee, and went to his room.
Entering the room, he immediately sat down in a chair. All muscles relaxed. He put the mug on the table, opened the office program, and continued writing the book. He remembered walking in the park and wrote it all down. It was extremely difficult to come up with something fictitious, at least for Peter; he clearly had no talent for original ideas.
He wrote until the evening. Word by word, sentence by sentence. By the time his mother returned from work, he had finished the third chapter and, sighing with relief, closed the office program and leaned back in his chair. The plan for the day was completed. Logging into his social network page, Peter turned on the music and indulged in dreams of the time when his book would already be sold in millions of copies, and he would be a rich and independent person.
CHAPTER 4. Meet Sveta
Peter woke up when everyone had already left, his sister went to school, and his mother went to work. For some time he lay on the bed, looking at the ceiling, and trying to gather his thoughts so that he could throw off the blanket and get up. There was no desire to get up. Peter imagined as if he had to get up for work every day, early in the morning, and then you won’t lie in bed, won’t soak under a warm blanket, get up, and that’s it.
Having thrown off the blanket, Peter abruptly jumped out of bed, telling himself that this had to be done, otherwise he would lie in it until lunch.
The room was cool.
Peter put on a T-shirt and went to the toilet to relieve himself. Then he went to the bathroom. There he turned on the tap, washed his face, brushed his teeth, and carefully looked at himself in the mirror, trying to understand how talented or untalented he was. It was difficult to judge talent, or lack thereof, by appearance.
Walking out into the kitchen, he turned on the electric kettle and reached into the refrigerator to look for something he could eat. In the refrigerator he found eggs, sausages, cheese and ketchup. This was enough for breakfast. There was still cottage cheese on the top shelf, and there were yoghurts, but it was impossible to take them. My sister ate yoghurt and cottage cheese, and if Peter had taken them, he would have received a beating from his mother in the evening. But since there was no desire to participate in scandals, Peter did not take anything from the top shelf.
Taking eggs and sausages, he went to the stove on which there was a frying pan. Having cut the sausage into the frying pan, Peter turned on the gas and began to wait for the chopped sausage to fry. The frying pan began to gurgle. Taking two eggs out of the package, Peter beat them one by one into the frying pan. The frying pan began to gurgle louder. The eggs immediately turned white and began to bake. Having closed the pan with a lid, Peter put the eggs back into the refrigerator.
The water in the kettle boiled and the kettle turned off.
Peter took a mug, poured coffee and sugar into it, and then poured hot water from the kettle over it all.
Putting the mug on the table, he took milk out of the refrigerator and added it to the coffee, stirring it thoroughly again.
Having put the milk in the refrigerator, Peter turned on the TV and turned off the gas under the frying pan in which the scrambled eggs were being fried. He took a clean plate and placed it on the table, and then dumped the scrambled eggs from the frying pan into it. Putting the empty frying pan back on the stove, Peter took out the ketchup from the refrigerator and squeezed some into the scrambled eggs, after which he put the ketchup back into the refrigerator. Breakfast was ready.
Sitting down on a chair in front of a plate of scrambled eggs, Peter switched the channel to the one where his favorite series about witches was playing, and began to break off a piece of baked yolk, smeared with ketchup, with a fork. Having broken off a piece of scrambled eggs, he immediately popped it into his mouth, without taking his eyes off the TV.
– So many episodes for one series. – Peter thought. «And all the action takes place in one house.» This series was made by talented people, there are more than a hundred episodes, and each, in fact, is different from the others, even though all the actions take place in the same places. I wish I could learn how to come up with things like that. That would be cool. I could then easily write any book, even if its events took place only in one apartment.
Peter carefully watched what was happening on the screen, chewing his scrambled eggs.
– You need to understand the formula by which scripts for TV series are written. – he thought. «Having understood this, I can write any work without any problems.»
Peter thought about what needs to be taken into account when writing long stories where the characters are in a limited space. And at the same time, write in such a way that it does not look boring and tiring. You can describe every action of the characters, but in the end it will get boring, and if you describe everything in a nutshell, you won’t be able to write a long text.
– Or maybe the texts in these series are not long at all, how do I know how many pages one episode takes? – thought Peter, continuing to look at the TV and chewing scrambled eggs with sliced sausage. «I guess I read too few books.» If I had read more, I would not have had any questions about what to focus on when writing a book. And I also want to become a writer, having read only a couple of books in my entire life. To write well, you need to read dozens, hundreds of books, so that the texts are imprinted in your mind, so that you know what to pay attention to when writing a text. Yes, I’m unlikely to be a writer. – something seemed to click in Peter’s mind. – Damn, what are you thinking about, you have to tell yourself that everything will work out for you, that you will write a book, that it will become a bestseller, that you will earn a lot of money from it, that you are generally a talent and a hero of our time. Enough of this whining that you won’t succeed and that you’re not capable of anything. Get ready and go write!
Having finished the scrambled eggs, Peter put the plate in the sink, took a mug of coffee from the table, and went into the room, to the computer.
Entering the room, he turned on the computer, sat down in a chair, and placed a mug of coffee near the monitor.
The computer booted.
Peter connected the Internet and opened his page on the social network. Then he opened the office program in which he wrote the book. Scrolling to the very bottom of the text, he began to think about a new chapter, but no thoughts came to mind.
– We need to come up with something. – Peter thought, looking at the white sheet frozen on the monitor.
He switched back to the social network page. But even there he did not find any ideas.
– These are only fragments, short moments, literally one paragraph, or even worse, one sentence, but you need to write a whole book. – he thought. «You can’t write a whole book with only one paragraph.» Yes, I went to a social network. I can write about this, but it’s one sentence. And if I start describing in detail what buttons I pressed when I went to the social network, then the publisher will not like it, and he simply will not accept my book for publication. The book should be interesting, and what is interesting in reading about what buttons the main character presses to enter a social network. I already overload the book with descriptions of actions in order to somehow fill the chapters with text. Now I can only envy those who easily write books of five hundred pages and use a minimum of descriptions. Where do they even get the text from if they don’t really describe anything, and at the same time use a minimum of dialogue? Maybe it’s all about actions? More action. My hero is like a plant, sitting at the computer, and I’m trying to stretch these gatherings over a whole chapter. And in those books, by those writers, the heroes are constantly in action, events are constantly changing, developing, something is constantly happening there. But on the other hand, I’m writing a boring book, which means I shouldn’t have any action. It’s just a boring book, that’s what I intended, that’s what I want. A book that girls will hold in their hands and get bored with it, sitting over the text. And the text itself will be boring, repetitive, and formulaic. No originality. Yes, that will be the motto of my book: «No originality.» Why should I invent something that has already been invented a long time ago? If I can’t write compelling stories, that means I’m untalented, and then I either shouldn’t write at all, or I should write the way I know how to write. I’m not a writer. I just want money, I want to get rich, I wrote a boring book. This means that I don’t need to try to stand out with the originality of the text. I’ll just write a boring book, so boring that even the publisher will tell me: «Your book is the most boring and boring book I’ve ever read.» And then I will answer him: «It was planned that way.» «Really?» – he will ask. «Yes, of course,» I will answer, «It’s a classic.» And it is true. All the classics are boring. And for me, modern classics. And in general, it seems that I am starting to feel depressed.
Peter turned his attention to the social network. He typed the phrase «Depression» into the search, and he was given several dozen groups dedicated to depression. He chose the most popular group and joined it.
Posts hung on the monitor, to which various photographs were attached, with captions. The photographs were gray and dull, just like the mood of those who entered this group.
– What am I doing here? – Peter thought.
He started reading posts and comments on them.
Under one of the photographs, he saw a comment from a girl named Sveta, who was talking about her experience of struggling with depression. Peter carefully read the comment and decided to ask her.
– What to do if you think you are getting depressed? – he wrote in the comments to the photo, addressing Sveta.
The answer came within two minutes.
– First, try not to think about the fact that you are depressed. Thoughts about depression intensify the state of depression itself.
– I don’t even think about her, I’m just writing a book, but no thoughts come into my head, and because of this, it seems to me that I’m starting to feel depressed. – Peter answered in the comment.
– What is this book about? – asked Sveta, writing in the comment.
– Well, it’s about a writer. About how a guy writes a book.
– Interesting, I guess.
– I don’t know, the readers will judge.
– If you don’t know what to write about, then take a break and rest. This should help. Distract yourself from something else, watch a movie, or listen to music.
– Yes, you’re probably right. Need to watch some movie.
– Go chat in private messages. – one of the guests of the group wrote.
Sveta wrote to Peter in private messages:
– Hello, if you want, you can write to me. By the way, why don’t you have friends?
– I don’t know, I don’t communicate with anyone.
– Can I add you?
