Did the Fire Make a Difference?

Daniel pressed the “delete” key for what felt like the hundredth time. In reality, it was more like 16, but when a copious amount of effort is invested in writing a story with no true resolution, each stroke wiping it away was akin to tearing off bandages stuck to sore flesh.

There was no way around it: he was wasting time now. His head gently landed on his desk before he dozed off. His dreams opened doors, but those doors closed the moment his keyboard reappeared in front of his face and he regained control of his consciousness. (If only there was a way to keep those doors open...)

Fast forwarding a year later =========>

Experimentation was inevitable for a college art student. Daniel's major wasn't art, but he intently hung around bohemian undergrads in hopes that it would expand his mind.

The largest step in his “expansion” was the long-feared but anticipated journey into psychedelic drugs. It worked for all of the greatest artists and musicians, so why not him?

After psychologically tiptoeing beyond his paranoia (a process which took several weeks), Daniel finally did his first hit. The “Spirit Molecule” twisted his mind into a new state. Within this state, he wrote a short story. His blog post spread like wildfire, and it wasn't more than a week before he started getting pursued by publishers.

His story garnered unending acclaim and popularity, spawning everything from t-shirts to internet memes and even a parody sketch on Saturday Night Live. It was rare that the short-form written word inspired such celebration in the digital age, but Daniel had broken down a new barrier with his unique flavor of rhetoric.

So what was the content of this pop-culture phenomenon?

It was a 478-word description of a coloring book page featuring a fireman saving a cat from a burning tree.

________________________________

Audience, please enlighten me

Because I'm probing for the secret

But there seems to be no key

Will I ever learn to find it?

No answer will satisfy

Because “true” success is all fake

And all the brilliant writers die

In mediocrity's cruel wake