This is a single-spaced document written in 12-point font, Times New Roman. It comprises about 500 words. If one copied the text of this page into a Microsoft Word Document with standard 1-inch margins on each side and printed it while retaining the formatting rules mentioned above, the text would neatly fill a sheet of 8.5 x 11-inch computer paper. This paragraph, for example, is being perfectly composed with such a page in mind. Like how a tailored shirt should fit just expectedly so.
I’m utilizing the Word Document formatting that has been imbued in me for as long as I can remember. We certainly learned how to type with proper home key placement in elementary school and, of course, our teachers introduced us to the Internet and its databases for study purposes, yet I cannot recall when I first began formatting documents with any particular concern for an orderly method. Perhaps when we first began assimilating the information we found via search engines into prim-and-proper essays did our teachers insist that we type to their specifications which became a paradigm of normality. I can now understand flaws in their teaching in the way that all of normality reveals its surface flaws if you dig a bit deeper, but I cannot imagine another way of drawing up a Document due to an unwillingness to reformulate a habit.
This is not a poem (which should already be clear), an essay, conceptual writing, or any other kind of writing under the heading of “Non-Fiction.” This is not a piece of autofiction, nor is it a short story, and obviously not the beginning of a novel. I’d avoid calling it flash fiction either. I’m simply writing a page within some specific parameters following the guidelines I’ve helpfully mentioned in the title and the first paragraph.
I’d like this to initially be published by an online literary journal that specializes in publishing lesser-known writers of experimental poetry and prose and that would be willing to take on a piece of writing by a writer who has yet to publish anything anywhere. I’d like to be paid for this. Eventually, this will end up anthologized in a book of fiction with similar page-long writings accompanying it which will necessitate an alteration in the way that it is currently being read (and written). I will not emend the words when this is in the beginning stages of being edited for a book. My hope is that this will end up on a syllabus in one or another contemporary literature or theory courses and be explicated by a class of students led by a professor willing to point out the text’s flaws and innovations. I have no desire to see this adapted into a film or stage production, and I consent to reading these words aloud at a small gathering of writers, along with an audience of friends and strangers, only if I am the one reading these words.
If I’ve strived for elegance or artfulness during this, it comes as a second-order to a bare level of creation. Upon near completion, I will begin re-examining the text and making a few edits although I am reluctant to change any of the underlying ideas. Of course, a few readers will have criticisms—so be it. I barely need them.
I just remembered: I haven’t been spacing twice after each sentence and colon like how we were told to in transcription class so long ago. If you’re working on this now, would you mind going ahead and fixing that for me? But all of that blank space… I’m already over the limit as it is. Which works best for you, anyway? Spanish? Russian? Norwegian? Korean? Portuguese? I think this would go over best with the French. They’d be the most receptive to a short piece of pseudo-autobiographical writing with certain restrictions. You’re right, I shouldn’t say any more. Not at the moment at least. Let’s Facetime later this evening at your time? Or is that too late? I saw that it’s been cold there. Isn’t it exciting that we’ll soon both be in print?