Three Lesser-Known Writers (And Their Natural Habitats)
- May 24, 2024
- 3 min read
by Susan L. Lin
I. The writer fox is a dying breed, rejecting the aid of widely available technologies like laptops, typewriters, and even fountain pens. Instead, the fox turns to his old-fashioned quill and ink every morning, warm and toasty inside a side burrow not too far from the den where his vixen and kits sleep. He must take advantage of this peaceful hour to scratch down five hundred words daily.
Today though, the fox has barely gotten started on his new manuscript (he recently completed a poetry chapbook and is now tackling a novel, his very first) when the nib of his trusty quill breaks flat with no length left to trim, rendering the instrument useless. The fox curses under his breath. His inkwell is also running low. The low growl of his belly reminds him he hasn’t yet had breakfast. In fact, he hasn’t made a kill all week and is growing hungry for fresh meat. They all are. Ever since they moved closer to the city for its glittering literary scene, they spend most nights scavenging for leftovers in the dumpster outside a nearby fried chicken joint.
With the morning lost, the fox goes above ground to hunt. Before long, his acute sense of hearing picks up a wild turkey close by. Within minutes, his family is awake and savoring a premature Thanksgiving meal. The fox slinks off early with a brand new feather between his teeth and enough berries to replenish his ink supply for another week.
Ready to pen a masterpiece.
II. The writer octopus is biologically destined for this line of work. But as an expectant mother, she is running out of time to make her mark. She now spends her days tending to thousands of fertilized eggs. Tiring, all-consuming responsibility.
Untold stories come and go.
The octopus thinks of her eight arms, how they once balled into fists at the first sign of conflict. She was hotheaded. A fighter. Until an older cephalopod told her, “Use your words.”
She’s been brimming with them ever since.
When a predator approaches her defenseless children before they’ve even hatched, the octopus is ready. Her ink sac full. The cloudy discharge of brilliant, jumbled prose spreads through the ocean and stuns the intruder into abandoning his conquest. This is her magnum opus, the most poignant, ambitious work she has ever created.
A legacy passed down from one generation to the next.
III. The writer plane believes in brevity. Even though the vast sky is an endless blank page, the plane never wastes a word. Those carefully composed messages have never been its own, however. A human is always at the controls, forcing its exhaust manifold to produce a trail of smoke with daring acrobatics.
The plane dreams of the day a self-piloting mechanism can be installed on-board its body. The day it will finally have a voice. No specific statements have been composed yet. But the plane knows one thing for certain:
Every single letter is going to count.
Susan L. Lin is a Taiwanese American storyteller who hails from southeast Texas and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Her novella Goodbye to the Ocean won the 2022 Etchings Press novella prize, and her short prose and poetry have appeared in over fifty different publications. She loves to dance. Find more at https://susanllin.wordpress.com.
