Me and My Boyfriend Wrote a Story On The Spot — And Halfway Through I Cried

It was 18:17 on July 29th. We stood, me and Ben, in my mom’s kitchen, rigatoni pasta boiling beside us.

And I was crying because I couldn’t poison the water supply.

Let’s rewind back to just before 6pm

Dinner time. We’d sauntered into the kitchen with the intent to make rigatoni bolognese, tear-free, and typically minus any mention of a gypsy curse. But as I was grating cheese (my sole role in any meal we make), I turned to Ben and said:

“Let’s write a story. Right now. Go.”

I started, plucking the name Herman Alberts from thin air and making him our main character. Ben chose his profession — a German alchemist — and between us, we’d back and forth ideas, no coherence, all consideration. Any idea went. We had to roll with whatever the other person said, continuously building and bulking out our tale. And thus, Herman’s story began to unfold.

Here is the story we told:

Herman Alberts, a German alchemist, his gypsy wife Esmeralda and their twin 12-year-old sons, Wilhelm and August move from Germany to Bristol.

Together, they practise gypsy alchemy (bridging the gap between witchcraft and science) and they’ve been promised free board in Bristol if they can help cure the Duke of Wales’ son from an illness that has been failed by existing modern science.

They succeed.

Because of this, they’re favoured by the royalists — become close friends, even — who then, in thanks, offer to help Herman and Esmeralda turn their trade into a mainstream business. Meanwhile, Esmeralda’s gypsy family is raging. To them, she’s exploiting traditional gypsy lore for profit. Esmeralda is torn between her family and the business they’ve built together, whilst also maintaining ancestral tradition. But her ancestors are having none of it. As a consequence of her actions, Wilhelm falls ill. None of their gypsy alchemy is healing him, because they weren’t built to remedy a gypsy curse. This, in turn, is causing the reputation of their business to decline — a business built on the sole premise of being able to aid in any ailment.

Wilhelm dies.

Distraught, Herman takes him to his lab and fishes around for their most forbidden potion: the one used for resurrection. He tells Esmeralda of his plans and, though she misses her son with an infinite sadness, she knows of the risks and dangers of this spell and grows enraged at the very idea. In the heat of the moment, she storms out and over to their friendly royals and informs them of Herman’s plan.

This was a bad move.

Suddenly, the whole town has heard and they are furious. Having only just relinquished their belief in witchcraft, such a thing as bringing the dead back to life is one of the most prohibited things possible. Augustus hears of their outrage and scurries home to tell his father to flee — as he, too, wants his twin brother back. They flee. The town is on a Herman hunt. Bristol detectives scour the street day and night for two days before locating him. They knock on his door, ready for a fight, only to be faced with Augustus — looking glassy-eyed and worse for wear. Except, it’s not Augustus. It’s Wilhelm.

He’s alive.

Flustered and panicked, Wilhelm invites the detective in to explain. Then kills him. Together, the men of the Alberts family dispose of the body and call their beloved Esmeralda for help. Having cooled down and overcome with joy at the sight of her boy, living and alive, she forgives them for their discretion and instead, turns to her gypsy family for help. She promises to cease with the gypsy alchemy for good if they help her remedy their mistake. They agree.

Before long, the town’s water supply is contaminated with a specially crafted gypsy memory potion. It erases the memory of every event prior to Wilhelm’s death. All seems right and good again. Until the next night, when it’s apparent that the gypsies are not so easily forgiving. Esmeralda’s mistakes could not be undone so lightly. The water was also infused with the very same resurrection spell used to bring back Wilhelm, now mixing with the very Earth beneath their feet. 12 hours later, corpses walk the streets, devouring every living being in sight.

Led, as it happens, by Wilhelm. His twin brother was the first to be eaten.

That’s a terribly quick, terrible scribble of what we improvised before we ate

But that story is not the point of this story.

You might have noticed that, within our little tale, I highlighted the sentence “the town’s water supply is contaminated with a specially crafted gypsy memory potion.” The very same sentiment that made me cry.

Hear me out: I cannot handle criticism.

In most areas of my life, that’s actually a lie. I suck at loads. I’ve got no common sense, I don’t know how to season food, I can’t stir sugar into a cuppa to save my life — and that’s okay. Berate me all you like. Bully me, jab at me, call me an unsweetened loser, whatever you fancy. I’ll laugh and nod along with you, throwing a couple digs at my own self along the way. I know what I suck at and I know that there’s nothing wrong with sucking, so it doesn’t bother me at all.

Except with the things that occupy my soul.

If somebody says my paragraph is boring, I’m checking out of existence. If somebody says my terminology is poor, I’m clocking off shift from this cosmic plane. If somebody doesn’t like my world-building, my world will crumble at my fragile feet.

When it comes to my passions, my purposes — things like writing, for example — any inch of criticism will shatter me. Especially when it comes from my soulmate Ben, the bloke I want to impress the most.

All he did was say, “I don’t think you should infect the water supply.”

He didn’t like the idea. Thought it was a bit too farfetched. He smiled as he said it. No screaming, no violence, no spitting on my very being. He just suggested that we think of something else.

What did I do? I nodded halfheartedly, with the most feeble smile in return, then wandered over to the table, turned away from him and let a tiny tear slip out from beneath my heavily eyelinered eye.

I cried.

Criticism is not a bad thing — but how we react to it can be

Ben meant nothing by it. He wasn’t being nasty or spiteful, he was being honest. It didn’t mean he hated everything else I’ve ever done. It didn’t mean he thought I was a terrible writer. It didn’t mean I went down in his estimations, now parked below people who don’t contaminate water supplies or even entertain the thought.

It just meant that it wasn’t his first choice.

And ten minutes later, he came around to it. Once I’d stopped silently crying, after he held my head against his heart, I explained what I meant. He began to like it, so we comprised. We contaminated the water supply in our fictional world, and in the real world, I washed up after dinner.

But I’ll admit, I felt a little silly.

I’m sensitive, in and beyond writerly endeavours, extending far into every corner of my life. Ben knows this. I know this. But sometimes, me and my eyeliner wish I didn’t cry so much about it.

Because criticism is normal. It’s expected. It happens. Whether you’re a writer or a human being, you’ll be criticised about something, sometime, that’s for certain.

And though criticisms and aneurysms feel the same, they don’t have to.

It doesn’t have to feel as though the world is ending every time somebody tells you your comma placement is off.

It sucks, I know, when somebody isn’t as enthusiastic and hyped up over an idea as you are — but don’t think of that as a fault, think of it as a challenge.

You’re a writer, you know that all stories, all characters, all readers are different. Some ideas suit some, some suit others. Use this opportunity as a chance to tailor your idea to a different demographic. Use this moment to make the thing they didn’t like — into something that they love.

Criticism gives you the chance to see things from another’s eyes. It allows you to see what else you can do to make something beautiful.

So imagine your neighbour pops round for a cuppa.

You offer him some bourbon biscuits. He turns them down, doesn’t like them, but you have nothing else to give.

Instead of floundering, all frantic apologies, no good biccies — you can say “oh I’m sorry! What do you like? Next time, they’re yours.”

He’ll say, “HobNobs. Choc coated.” *Chef’s kiss* Then you go get them. Next time he comes around — next time anybody comes around — you’ll have twice the amount of biscuits in stock, meaning twice the likelihood of pleasing whoever’s home.

See what I mean?

The more criticism you receive, the more chance you get to alleviate it before it can happen again.

So yeah, you can cry. There’s a strong possibility that I’ll sob at any negative feedback, forever. But as long as I learn from it, implement it, try and evolve: then those tears are simply watering the storytelling soil, so more beautiful things can grow.

You know?

(That being said, don’t say anything mean in the comments. I’ll only cry about it).