Process

I wanted to take some time to reflect on what I'm noticing in my writing process as of late.  My habit has become, quite unintentionally, to capture my thoughts longhand in a notebook.  So, when I'm going to be writing something fresh I take out fountain pen and paper and go at it for an hour or two.  Then I close my notebook and go home.  The following day after work, I'll get situated at my neighborhood Starbucks and do a re-read.  I am often surprised at the clarity 24 hours can provide.  It's like looking at something with fresh eyes.  I can see where the story starts.  Sometimes it's right away but often there is at least a paragraph of warm up words, the chaff, the stuff you have to get out of the way in order to get to the kernel.  I can tell when I'm there because it takes on a rhythm.  It starts to flow.  It may not be perfect but there is something true there, some thread worth following.  Fresh eyes are for the edit...

Let's not start at the very beginning.  Let's start smack dab in the middle with the girl who was the turning point.  Her name was Debbie.  She was big as in tall, big-boned, big breasted, big voiced, big eyed and big in personality.  She spoke her mind and carried herself with a self-assured authority which belied her level of education.  I took to her right away.  She came into my life at the time when another relationship was ending, my marital relationship, and I was facing a lot of firsts. It is difficult to put into words how it feels, even now, as I recall the approach of those firsts - the first birthday, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and Easter as not a family.  The loss is more than the tragedy of the way things are, it is the trauma of losing what had come before.  Things like the Thanksgivings when my Mom and Dad came to visit our family in our single story four bedroom rambler on a third acre in my favorite Sou...

I don't know what came first, the movie or the party.  I only know that it came to an end the night he dropped my friend off first.  Backing out of her driveway, he looked at me through the rear view mirror and said, "What's the matter with you.  Are you a lesbian or something?"  Without hesitation I blurted out an indignant, "No!" and turned my head to look out the far-sided window.  Heat rose from my neck to my face.   I wanted to hide.  I thought,  How could he think that about me?   Yet the sting of humiliation persisted like an unanswered question gnawing at me from the inside.

I sat down tonight and set about the task of expanding upon the section entitled "Debbie" but as I read through it, it was apparent that I had written a skeletal version.  This surprised me because when I wrote it I felt the weight of the story and assumed that I had written something commensurate with what I had felt.  I was wrong so I set about fleshing it out.  This I learned - some things can't be written about in coffee shops.  Some things can only be written in private where you are free to let tears fall and snot drip from the tip of your nose without concern for making others uncomfortable.  Some things you need to write alone. 

It was the summer before tenth grade when Purple Rain came out in 1984.  I sat in my chair on the left side of the theater watching the screen, pretending not to notice my friend making out with her date in the seats next to me.  Today I wonder why had I been invited to tag along and why had I said yes?  It is not hard to put myself in my room at my parent's house with the telephone in my hand, dialing the the push buttons and waiting for my old friend to pick up.  We hadn't seen as much of each other since my parents had moved us across the intercoastal waterway and North up I-95 to the town of Palm Beach Gardens the year before.  I'd probably called her and asked her what she was doing that weekend.  Did she want to hang out? Maybe she felt sorry for me.  Maybe that's why, when she said she had plans to go to the movies with her boyfriend, she said I could come along.  Maybe I said, "Okay," because I wanted any little bit of my friend I could ...

I began transcribing this section from my notebook today and it took an unexpected turn.  I present what I have below with some added comments to show the process unfolding. +++ Let's not start at the very beginning.  Let's start smack dab in the middle with the girl who was the turning point.  Her name was Debbie.  She was big as in tall, big-boned, big breasted, big voiced, big eyed and big in personality.  She spoke her mind and carried herself with a self-assured authority which belied her level of education.  I took to her right away.  Though the nature of our jobs kept us from working in close proximity, our paths crossed a time or two during the work day. She was kind to me.  On my first Thanksgiving separated from my husband, she invited me and the kids to her house for the holiday along with a few of her other friends.  ++ What follows is the turn.  It was not in my notebook but apparently is a segue which needs to be follo...

This morning the cat dragged my black cashmere sweater out of my room and down the stairs by the sleeve.  It trailed between his legs like roadkill.  I let 'im do it, cuz it was cute.  Next, I considered how my lenience as a parent had affected my children.  I marched downstairs.  On the kitchen floor I found my sweater speckled with dog hair.  The cat, lying next to it, still clutched the sleeve in his mouth.  He was docile as I opened his mouth and removed what was not his, merely lifting his head to watch me as I stood up and walked away. 

Bare with me as I figure this whole narrative thing out.  What I've spent the last 2 evenings working on I've decided to cut.  It's not necessary and it doesn't move the narrative along.  The tip off was the fact that it bored me to write it.  What follows I think is meant to book end the story.  I think the meat of the story is waiting to be written but in keeping with the theme, "show your work", I will present it here.  Note that I keep using the words, "I think" because I really have no clue.  I just know it feels out of place here.  Begin narrative: The thing about the road trip, I just wanted to be there - at the destination.  It was a means to an end.  That is what coming out was.  It had to be done.  Like eating aspirin smashed in strawberry jam or giving an oral report, I had to get it over with.  I didn't relish it.  It wasn't fun, but it brought a sense of relief and of victory. It's the victory which c...

I'm finding the format of the blog useful in creating an ongoing narrative.  Once I post a section, that's it.  It's gone.  I don't look at it again.  It's onto what's next, a clean slate and forward progress.   In past attempts I've opened up a document in Word or Google docs or in Scrivener.  Before adding to the narrative I'd reread all or in part, what came before.  This inevitably leads to editing, improving, tweaking, rearranging.  Say, this is uncomfortably familiar - reminiscent of being in the bathroom with scissors or naked in the hallway.   Before too long I get bogged down.  I lose my momentum and damn it, I can't get what came before right.  Damn, it's exactly the same.   I'll never get it right.  Uh huh.  Same old story - just one more tweak.   What I thought was good is now crap.  Like my haircut.  Who am I fooling?  I don't know what I'm doing.  Ain't tha...

Every year we took a rafting trip down the Nantahala River on one of those big rafts with inflatable sides.  I'd tuck my tennis - shoed feet under it, in the hope that it would prevent me from being flung into the icy cold water.   My big brother thought it would be hilarious to send us down the rapids backward, removing all chance of steering ourselves as we'd been instructed under the cover of the Nantahala Outdoor Center's educational shelter.  Before loading up on the old school buses to be shuttled to the put in site, we'd sat on wooden benches listening to the do's and don'ts of the trip.  I'm pretty certain we were not instructed to go down the rapids backwards and pretty certain we were instructed to avoid the eddy on the right side of the rapids in front of a large rock because if we fell out, we could pulled under and into a washing machine like vortex which would spin us around and around under the water and may even be drowned.  Did I mention t...