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.