That's What Friends Are For, and, First Paragraph

It's been a very long time since I last posted an entry. But that doesn't mean I haven't been writing. I have! I am nearly done with chapter 2, which introduces some important characters and concepts, which makes me feel incredibly pressured, like I'm at a job interview for a position I am totally unqualified for.

Attempting to move this story along is daunting. I alternately hate myself and love myself. I alternately think this book is going to be wonderful and that I am wasting precious time. We all die, my mind reminds me, as I sit at the computer for three hours and manage to eke out one unsatisfying paragraph. We all die, and you're dicking around with this goofy idea that won't appeal to anyone but yourself. What's wrong with you?

This is what friends are for. They won't tell you your book sucks. If you start to second guess yourself, here's a tip: Send your work to your maid of honor. She will assure you that you are a genius. She will promise you that if she came across this book in a book store, she would buy it. And after she tells you these things, and you blot the tears of gratitude from your eyes, you will grab your laptop and drag it to the nearest coffee shop and pound out three more pages. Thanks, Hillary!

I realize that I haven't bothered to mention what this book is about. And that's because there is a deep-seated fear that if I do, the reaction will sound like a million balloons deflating. Hisssssss, plbbbbbt. I'd have to preface any plot description with no less than ten disclaimers.

While I work up the nerve to write a summary of the book to share here, I'll post the first paragraph of the book. You will notice that I went with the first sentence that my four blog readers voted on. Thanks, guys!

Chapter One: What It’s Like

Some people work for something and others just work; Grace Lowe, like every Lowe, didn’t have a choice. In the small of the morning when her desperation was at its mildest, she was cocooned in her favorite fantasy, where the day waited on her, and not she on it. She would let the sleep slowly fall from her shoulders and then shuffle naked into the kitchen to make rich, dark coffee sprung with real cream. In the kitchen by the door hung a hook and on the hook was a lightweight white robe that she put on to walk out into the garden and sip her coffee from a chair facing the sun, and the air would be just crisp enough to turn the coffee into a song down her throat. And a very big book would be in her hand, one so thick she couldn’t hold it comfortably until she was halfway through and it would fall evenly enough to lay flat. The book would be very good. It would say things she always wanted to hear, open boxes in the attic of her mind. The book would get her mind humming, a thrum that drove her to excited distraction, and she would battle back and forth: Keep reading? Or pick up the notebook? The notebook held thick lined paper with a little slickness to it, just buffed enough that a pen seemed to move itself. The notebook was a house that she was building, an untouched expanse of land that needed clearing and digging and foundations and the lumber of thoughts. Grace would put her feet up on a little stool and write. She did not know what she was writing; she did not care whether it was any good. And here the fantasy spooked itself, because Grace was incapable of daydreaming the passing of hours, it was impossible to imagine what it looked like to sit in the sun and write. A tease of a daydream, a pleasure in the beginning and a slap of frustration at the end.

I Have a Chapter

This weekend, I finished Chapter One. At least I think I did; I'm finding it very difficult to tell whether its length is acceptable or whether, on a little book printed page, it would be very short.

But the important thing is that I did it. My plan, after much overthinking, was to have the first chapter serve as an introduction to the world without telling every single detail of the world Grace lives in. This was difficult for me. It would be so much easier to say, "And the house looks like this. And Grace is like this. And her town is like this. And her mother is like this. And then later This will happen and That will happen and you will be intrigued." Moving the story along while providing glimpses and hints is a big challenge for me.

I also discovered that I have a brevity problem. If I kept writing as succinctly as I began, the book would be five chapters long and would read like a section of the bible (you know, so and so begat so and so and then the sinner messed up and then things were fixed or they went to hell--a life story in as few words as possible). I found myself covering entire days in one paragraph. I had to return to each paragraph and flesh them out. This is where writing poetry is not helpful when writing a novel.

Discipline is not my strong suit. When I had the itch to write on Saturday, I realized I wouldn't be able to do it at home. I always think I''ll be able to sit at the little blue desk Ian made for me and pound out a couple of pages, but when I sit down, I find myself on Facebook after five minutes.

Because Saturday was a beautiful day, I decided to take my laptop to a coffee shop. Arlington is not Milwaukee, and finding a little coffee shop to spend your day at is as difficult as finding parking in Clarendon. So I went for convenience and headed to a place near my office, where I had seen outdoor tables.

The place was surprisingly dumpy. Not only were there cops inside taking notes when I arrived, but the coffee was bad and the outdoor tables were littered with cups with lipstick marks. I really hate lipstick marks. But I forged ahead. After an hour, I went back inside to order the crappiest bagel on the planet. I went in to pee and there was no toilet paper. After two more hours, I went to pee again, only to find the doors locked and the bitchy barista shooing me away with her yellow gloves.

It was 2:00 p.m. The hours posted stated the dive was open until 6 p.m. Bitchy barista knew very well that I was sitting right in front of the freaking store working away. There were no trash cans outside. So, nearly pissing my pants (I swear I felt a trickle) I carried not only my laptop but my empty coffee cup and the remainder of my wretched bagel with me to my car.

It didn't matter, though. Because I was on a writing high. Writing highs are kind of like running highs, but running highs don't come with the bitter hangover of a writing high. The hangover that says, "You fool! You thought you wrote something really good! HA! Read it again, Sucker. Read it again."

The same remorse, regret, and utter depression will occur after I finish Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 . . . you get the idea. And I can live with that.

Exercise: First Line

Oy. I keep commiting to things on this blog that I actually don't want to do at all. I mean, that was the point: accountability. But this latest idea of mine really takes the idiot cake. What kind of masochist puts themselves through this kind of stress? "Gee! You know what's a good idea? I'll write some potential first lines of my completely unbegun novel and then I'll post them for people to look at and realize that I shouldn't be writing a book at all! That'll give this ole horse some git up and go!"

Ugh. Vote for the one you hate the least.

1. Some people work for something, and others just work; Grace Lowe, like every Lowe, had no choice.

2. On her eighteenth birthday, Grace could only think of it as the five-year-anniversary of her life dying.

3. She would never call herself a slave.

4. With the morning always came the reminder: You're still here.

5. Bless and curse this house.

6. In the small of the morning, the desperation was mild.

Do I Make You Sleepy?

I've battled insomnia for years, and have come to accept it as something that Sucks About Me. I won't take sleeping pills because I have an addictive personality (cigarettes; cheddar and sour cream chips; chocolate croissants; wine; chick lit) and I'm running out of room under my shame bush. Not to mention that in my younger years, I saw my insomnia as a virtue of sorts. I didn't need sleep! How cool was that? In high school, I could stay up until 5 a.m. reading in bed and be at first period only ten minutes late. (Like, every day. It's amazing I didn't get in trouble more often.) In college, I took a full course load, worked two jobs, ran five miles every day, got drunk nearly every night, and still managed to write when the rest of the town was asleep. I'm not saying I produced good work, but at least I could get it up. I had more energy than a coked-up seven-year-old boy.

Folks often lament that they "had so much energy" when they were young. These people are usually in their forties or fifties. What they don't tell you is that the torpor starts as soon as you trade in your Applebee's khakis for a fugly J.C. Penney suit. When you're twenty-two, not forty-two. Before you've had kids, before you've bought a condo, before you've really put that energy and wakefulness toward whatever big-effing-dream you had.

I still have insomnia, but I no longer have the energy for insomnia. It's not a virtue anymore, it's a curse. Instead of twenty-one productive waking hours a day, I have twenty-four hours of foggy confusion. Because I need to eat, pay rent, and go to happy hours, I have to keep a job. Keeping a job requires sleep, and so I've been forced to develop strategies to put myself to sleep, from breathing techniques to visualizing strange-colored animals. (The how-to: Close your eyes and say in your mind: Green bunny. Once a clear and detailed picture of a green bunny appears, move on to, say, purple tiger.)

And about a year ago I developed a very successful strategy: Build my dream house in my mind, room-by-room, in excruciating detail. Occasionally this exercise is distracting because I become depressed at my chances of ever owning this home. But, usually I don't get past the Italian tile and brick kitchen before I fall asleep, which translates to twenty-five minutes from the start of the exercise to snoring and sleepy ass-scratching. Before this, I had never been able to fall asleep in just twenty-five minutes.

But now I'm down to five minutes. FIVE MINUTES!--without four Strongbows. Right now the four of you reading this are asking, How Katie? How on earth have you reduced your time by Impressive%? (I tried to do the math but I don't think 212% is the correct answer.) What forward-thinking and creative technique have you pioneered?

I'll tell you, but I'm going to preface it with: I think it's ironic. (I can never really be sure with irony.)

The new technique involves trying to stay awake. How is that for reverse . . . psychosis? I've been beckoning, inviting, my insomnia, which has written some of my favorite things, in order to work through the first paragraph of my book in my mind. I call it mind-writing (catchy, eh?). Mind-writing allows ideas to grow like weeds in the fertile soil of your soul. Weeds are an integral component of the Garden of Ideas. Weeds can be identified and eradicated later, because they will have also fertilized big leafy plants of genius! One cannot recognize a flower without first naming the weeds. Mind-writing shall produce a stunning first line of prose that encapsulates all feeling in the world! The previous four lines will be the blurb for my new self-help book, Mind-Writing Your Way to the Bestseller List.

But I keep falling asleep before I mind-write the first line, let alone the first paragraph. My book is already a snooze and it's not even written.

But I need to write this first line. There is no book without a goddamn beginning. For inspiration, I have reviewed this amazing list of the 100 Best First Lines from Novels as chosen by the American Book Review. Inspired, I will draft at least five (well, if you know me, that means five) first lines to my novel. And then the four of you readers will vote! And then I will pretend to take your input into consideration! Watch this space, as they say somewhere I can't remember.

My Friend the Published Writer

I need to give big ups to my friend Jessy, who has recently achieved the impossible dream: publication. Jessy (Ms. Jessica if you're nasty) is currently in the Non-fiction MFA program at George Mason and has been working her butt off. She wrote an incredible short piece called Arlington which, to me, reminds us of how our past throws our emotions in our face at unexpected times.

Enjoy!

Jessica's Piece in Flashquake

Exercise: 5 of 7 in 7

Sixth Grade, New York

It's cold and I don't have a winter coat.
But my mom has one from the seventies.
Lilac corduroy, pleats, an oversized
peter pan collar filled with down.
It does not bear the name of a sports team.
My name appears at the top of the Big Tits list,
which finds its way to me in assembly.
Number two on the list is pregnant
within two months. She tells me over pizza
and I take her to the penny candy store,
fill her little white bag with whatever she wants.
At a sleepover in her huge Victorian
her mother pulls a knife and tells her to die.
In November I shoplift at the mall: hair clips,
silver nail polish, multi-colored button earrings.
I am caught and I think my dad won't love me
anymore. He does. Christmas is so white
we can't get our car out of the driveway
and we walk to mass in snowsuits. In the spring
my parents abandon their faith but make us keep ours.
My brothers wait until the car is out of sight and split
to smoke in the alleys and god knows what else.
I go in and I pray and sing the songs, and when I leave
the priest holds my hands and wishes me peace.

Exercise: 4 of 7 in 7

So, I missed yesterday because I had too much to drink at happy hour. Therefore, you get the special treat of two really self-absorbed poems in one day! Yes, it is your lucky day. The following two poems are what I call "drafts so rough they'll skin your knees."

Fifth Grade, Arizona

Of course it's hot. But hotter even
than I dreamed. Everything changes now,
the slice of life I knew dripped itself into a puddle
that disappears on the pavement. I spend
a lot of time alone. The house is empty of people
but I am given a cat. My new friend's parents
forbid her from my house: it is lawless,
we sit on the roof and we go to the playground
at midnight and no one is there to tell us not to.
In school I am considered very white
and there is a group of Mexican girls
who make a hobby of kicking my ass.
Meet us at the hill. I go, every day, for weeks
to take my beating. They throw me by my long hair.
One day I cry in the bathroom because
I have a knot in my hair larger than a grapefruit.
It's underneath but it begins to show through
the few untangled strands covering it. I cannot
brush it out. The brush is now stuck in the knot
which is stuck in my hair. One of the Mexican girls
rubs my back while I sob. In the long
sepia mirrors we look like friends.
Later in the year I do two amazing things.
I win a spelling bee. And I save a woman's life.
She was on the ground, flailing, pointing to her throat.
Her bike was beside her in the dust.
I ran very fast to the Circle K and soon the ambulance came.
I rode my bike miles to visit her in the hospital.
She promised me all the books I could ever want.
I wrote them down with my address in purple ink.
I never heard from her again.