Distant Writing

'Untitled'
An exercise in distant writing (that is, shunning all adjectives, metaphors, similies, thoughts, emotions and feelings.)

I'm lying on my bed next to her. The clock says half two in the morning. She is holding a book near the lamp by my bed, reading the collection of comic strips. Every so often she bursts into laughter. Sitting up I look up and down her body, and then over at the strip she is reading now. She laughs out loud again, and I smile. She turns the page.

"I don't get this one," she says. So I explain it to her, and then she laughs again.
I get up and step over her and off the bed. "I'm just going to the toilet," I tell her. She makes a noise in response. Looking at her I smile again before leaving the room. I turn on the bathroom light and relieve myself, leaving the door open.

The idea of this type of writing is to avoid the overuse of internalisation (writing the thoughts, feelings and opinions of the main character), and this exercise that we did on Monday was very useful for me because I have a nasty habit to internalise A LOT. Authors who write like this, such as Raymond Carver and, of course, Ernest Hemingway, use this technique to create emotion through refusing to engage with it. It also allows the reader to find emotion and feeling beneath the surface, instead of being told how to think by the writer. I really like this way of writing; expect more of it from me.