It was late evening on the 24 December. The Old Writer was dozing in front of his fireplace.

Actually, he didn't have a real fireplace. So the Old Writer was dozing in front of the television set. The cable company, knowing that many people don't have real fireplaces, had thoughtfully provided out of its 300+-channel bounty a broadcast consisting of 24 hours' worth of cheery blaze on a suitably brick-looking hearth. If you turned up the gas heat, it was almost like being there. The small dog wasn't fooled, though, but she didn't care, because she had a warm lap to doze on, anyway. Laps were better for dozing than hearths, being unlikely to throw sparks and catch your fur on fire. Besides, the dog had an ancestral memory of being a turnspit dog, and harboured a latent resentment of fireplaces.

As the Old Writer drifted into a holiday trance, he was thinking about the great classic Christmas tales: The Gift of the Magi, A Christmas Carol, Santa Claus: The Movie….now why, he thought, couldn't he come up with a classic like Dickens'? Were all the good stories taken? Surely not…

ZZZZZZ… came from the chair, and also zzzzz…, since the dog was asleep, too. We'll let her sleep, because she didn't tell us what she was dreaming. Probably something with liver treats in it.

The Old Writer, however, woke (or thought he did) to a peculiar sound. He dimly remembered that tone, from his childhood: usually when he got up early on Saturday mornings to watch television before his parents got up. Cartoons were mostly what was on, but you might luck up and find some good Communist programming from those blacklisted writers hiding out in England. Ah, there it was: the Old Writer smiled to himself.

And then sat bolt upright. He almost dropped the bowl of cereal in his lap. He was wearing flannel pyjamas! And he had shrunk (slightly). This was his childhood. Wait a minute. Am I time travelling? Again? he thought.

'Yes,' said the Voice from the old black-and-white set. The Voice went on to explain at patronising length, about imagination and the reaches of the mind. The Old Writer, now a Young Person with a Crayon, waved his hand impatiently.

I know all that, he thought. Yadda yadda. I was hypnagogically speculating about originality, darn it, not reminiscing about old science fiction. And certainly not old science fiction in black and white.

The Voice replied smugly¹, 'I know. But do you think Homer was the first person to tell a story about Ulysses? Where did Shakespeare get his ideas from?"

Er, Holinshed's Chronicles. And Roman history. Stuff like that, thought the Old Writer, forgetting that he hadn't been to school yet.

The Voice agreed. 'Um, hm. What about Chaucer?'

He cribbed off Boccaccio. Okay, okay, I get your point. Everybody got the story from somewhere, even if it was just Mrs McGillicuddy down the block. So what makes it original, if you're so smart?

'What did I do?' asked the Voice. 'I took ideas and combined them. I looked around and asked, What If…?' There was a Sound Effect of snapping fingers. 'I know! Remember this?'

The television showed this very scary film from 1956. The Old Writer's little-boy hair stood on end – which wasn't hard, since his mother had made him get a butch cut which made him look like a bottle brush.

Not fair, he thought. That TV set should be showing black and white.

'Poetic licence,' purred the Voice. 'You use that all the time, like claiming you remembered seeing that film when you were four. When you know you didn't, because, one, your parents never watched the Ed Sullivan Show, and two, if you had, your hair would have turned white like that Canadian kid's.'

My hair did turn white, the Old Writer thought. Only not from that. Okay, so it's dreamtime licence, showing this film now. I only found it later, and I'm glad. What kind of lousy trick was that to play on little kids in the Fifties? They weren't responsible for the Cold War. Anyway, what does that film have to do with the price of bananas?

The Voice chuckled, the kind of deep chuckle that made you remember that the Voice belonged to a man with very hairy eyebrows. 'Don't you see? I wrote horror stories because the horror was all around me. You said it once, yourself: I even had a discussion with my wife over whether to build a fallout shelter in my backyard. We decided not to, and I wrote an episode called The Shelter. What kind of world do you live in?'

A world of postliterate cluelessness, thought the Old Writer bitterly as he chomped his cornflakes. Surprisingly, they weren't soggy yet, and crunched pleasantly. Then the Old Writer remembered that he was lactose intolerant, and set the unfinished bowl of flakes and milk on the floor. Saturday morning bellyaches were something he did not miss about the past. But he got back to the subject. Postmodern folk know the meme for everything, but the meaning of nothing.

'There you are!' said the Voice. 'You're already being clever about the situation. How are you going to address it?'

By using the right media, for one thing. It's not weekly television and radio versus print anymore. It's online, ebook, binge-watched Netflix…

'Ah, yes. We get those up here, too.'

It's memes, tropes, 'referencing', quote quote quote. You have to keep up with the 'trends', you know. But I suppose…

'Yes?'

I suppose you could do all that and sneak in a message or two. Like that show Broadchurch…

'Which you binge-watched the other week.'

Which I binge-watched. Because it's like reading a novel, only with moving pictures and background music. And found very satisfying. Sure, the story's plot involves mobile phones and text messages, but other than that, it's ancient. In fact, one scene near the end put me in mind of an Icelandic saga. As well it should, since the writer has admitted to listening to Icelandic music all the time while writing it.

'So the only thing that's changed is the medium, right? Shakespeare had to convince people not to worry about the 'unities'. I had to use science fiction to get around the networks' objection to socially conscious drama. In the twenty-first century? Boy, I never thought I'd get to say that. Well, in the twenty-first century, you've just got to get their attention any way you can, and try to pick your insights where you find them. A cheap gimmick never hurt.'

Like shamelessly 'referencing' classic TV through the whole thing?

'Yeah. That might work.' The Voice chuckled again as the TV showed an ending that was, on its own, a sly reference. Then the set turned itself off, rather like in The Twonky, fading to the familiar white dot. The Old Writer sighed, and closed his eyes.

The past is a nice place to visit, he thought, but I wouldn't want to live there. Better wake up and see if the dog needs a walk. That was a nice Christmas present, though, and I'm grateful for one thing.

'What's that?' asked the distant Voice in his head.

That there was no ghost of Christmas Future in this dream. That would have been de trop.

When he woke up, the Old Writer found an iPad in his lap – a gift from Santa or the dog – open to a page that said: Periodic Table of Tropes. The Old Writer smiled as he clicked. But he was thinking of Tom Lehrer as he read. You can only teach an old dog so many new tricks.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

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