Every time an idea meets its death inside my head, three more grow in the enriched soil the death provides. The ideas that survive also produce young. My mind is a brutal place for ideas; many never make it out through my pen, or they make it out in a deformed state, one which I must destroy, and which often fathers its own more beautiful twin. I feel the places I create with all of my mind and sometimes my body, like a dream that causes fear or pleasure. I don't let myself have bad dreams anymore.

       My mind dreams of swimming to cool the heat of my bed. I can feel how cool it is on my sleeping body even though I am not physically there. I can feel the cool, lazy support of the water all around me, and it makes my fever break. I remember that I have not brought clothes or a towel and hope I don't get chilly on the way home from the pool, which is suddenly in my backyard and which I know is off-limits. I do something then that I cannot outside of dreams: When I leave the water blanket I change the very air around me to comfort me as the water did. I walk home, wake up, and breed ideas.

       I am not sure if my characters are in the same place in my mind in which my dreams reside, but it seems I have almost equal control over these imaginary folks as I do over my dreams. Sure, there are those times when you dream lucidly and are in complete control, but those are frighteningly rare, and the same goes for writing fiction. I wonder sometimes if they are theistic and believe in me. Most of them I create somewhat in my image, and I do direct their lives sometimes, but I cannot read their minds all the time, and sometimes it seems as if they see where the story is going before I mean them to. Perhaps they have a feeling of déjà vu when they first see a place where they will one day do something great. I wonder if they can experience that feeling that I sometimes feel: The thoughts shouting I REMEMBER THIS even though there's no way I could. I don't care if they believe in me. I'll continue to direct their lives whether they know it or not, and everything I do in their world is for a reason. Books have stopping points but the past-prime character lives on.

I am not omnipotent, but I can do anything I want to them. I am not omnipresent, but I can effectively stop time without their noticing and survey anything I like at my leisure. I am not infinitely benevolent either, since one character may die to make for an interesting story. If I don't want to finish out a character's life, I let them die of natural causes, their minds fizzling away like an old woman with Alzheimer's.

       When I write I try to be logical and leave out the parts that make no sense. Yet I remember parts of my childhood that didn't make sense. Such as my obsession with writing cursive f's. When I missed a day of school and then saw how many f's there were in the make-up work that I had been robbed of writing, I almost cried. I wrote lots of f's to please myself but it just wasn't the same. What kind of screwy writer has a kid do that?

       I want to be an immortal God-writer so that my stories can spin in the heads of future generations and have them calling I REMEMBER THIS.

       The world wants me to eat it. It wants me to shove it down my throat and let it trickle out of my pen. Why is that? The world is technically inanimate. Then why do trees beg me to write about them; why do colors use my eyes as a filter; why does even the sidewalk want me to tell its story?

       I just got up from writing this to get a drink of water and I remembered something. I remembered that when I got back from getting my drink I would have more to write. And the remembering itself is what I am writing about. It seems to be circular logic. Like someone having a vision of a car hitting a person, running to stop it, and becoming the person in the vision. And realizing it one second before the car hits. I wonder about this. Do these creepy things I write count as writing? Am I a poet? Does it matter?

       I think I still have a fever. Who the hell needs drugs? Keep them away from me; I don't want the creative zones of my brain opened any more than they are. I wonder if there is a reason that sometimes I feel like I hear sand falling from my brain down my neck. I wonder if this is God listening in. I wonder if that noise I hear is the static from God's equipment. He can't afford to buy modern equipment because he is actually a teenage boy with pimples who works as a busboy. I am laughing at God because I am his glorified character and I'm better than him and he knows it and he knows I know it. Whenever God does his homework and leaves me alone I get bored. When he gets back to me I've caused all kinds of mischief in his head. He's a weird little man. The Earth smells like him.

       Damn, I can barely see this piece of paper. God gave me one of his physical faults: Nearsightedness. He did it so I could seem more human to him. I gave my character split ends and my fashion sense. I just love her. I can sing and God can't. Ha ha. He told me. He might not be your God because you might be someone else's character. Maybe we're friends because my God and your God are lovers and decided to do a crossover. When they break up my relationship with you is history. I might not even remember it in a year because that chapter went in God's trash can. If we cared about knowing each other at all, we can only hope that he'll use the recycle bin. I sure wish I'd never thrown out any of my writing. I wonder if God's world is in my stories. Does he even know I'm a writer? I think he's cleaning the toilet at work as I'm writing this. I don't feel like thanking him for life. I make him feel better. I reward him by existing. I think I might go back to sleep and dream some more before he wakes me up.