JP's Time Limited

Link to Original Story: Time Limited - JP

JED sucks. Hard. This time, we gave each other different pitches, so that we wouldn’t have more than the 2 hour time limit to prepare. His pitch happened to include the little proviso that I everything I wrote immediately became part of the story. In other words, I couldn’t erase anything, except to fix typos. And that’s why this monster emerged. I spent about an hour thinking on this one, but since I couldn’t write anything down (or else my notes would have had to be part of the story), a lot of that thought vanished into the open air, and its dried up leavings became this excrement. There’s an interesting idea in here; I think I found where I was going with it when she confronts the whale, but mostly, not so much. I intended the opening and closing segments to look like arrows, by the way. There’s a small chance I might come back some day and whisk this idea away from its drab existence to a fabulous life as a real honest-to-god story, but then again, maybe not.


Occasionally, JP sells himself way short. Okay, he often sells himself way short. I really liked this story. Much like his recent 'Palimpsest' this story displays a nice touch of word play and shaping, and yet contains an evocative and creative soul. I thought this idea was crazy cool. Harpooning an angel/God/whale of time? Neat in anyone's book! It does seem slightly Quantum Leap, but without the high minded morality, and that's also a good thing. I should also mention that I gave the little (he's actually notably taller than I am) SOB (he's not really a SOB - our mother is a very nice woman. Really) a hard pitch on purpose. See, he's getting too talented for our little dabbles. He's hitting proverbial homeruns every time out, and I'm sick and tired of it. From now on, my pitches are going to be balls to the wall hard. Which will undoubtedly lead him to rise to the occasion and produce some truly sterling work. I'd love to see him rewrite this story, give it the polish and extrapolation it deserves. But I'm not going to lambast it here, because frankly, I think it's pretty damn good for the pitch it came from. Pretty damn good flat out. He stays on point and delivers the goods.