If I Could Only Keep This Up
I’ve decided to post a tiny excerpt from the story I attempted to write for National Novel Writing Month. I made it to the half-way point at about 25,000 words, but realized my characters and story needed more work, and I needed to step away from them. Frankly, they were irritating me even more than actual people do.
But I like my beginning, so here it is, completely unedited. Did you hear that? Completely unedited. There are bits of prose that might be familiar, since a couple of ideas have come from poetry I’ve written here. But it’s still a mess and will require many hours more of work.
Shared History
I used to remember every moment of my life in correct chronological order. Or, rather, I thought I did. I would periodically review my life year by year, month by month even, to reassure myself that each memory was where I’d placed it. There was the bike wreck that happened in New York while visiting Grandma, the childhood friend I kissed on the cheek while standing in my kitchen. There, tucked neatly inside my brain’s grey matter, was first love.
I am packing now to move back where I came from, a sprawling mid-size city that nonetheless manages to maintain its small town feel and even smaller mindedness. On any given day, I will be able to walk out my front door and within half an hour see the following things:
The house where I grew up, the Chinese garden in the park where I used to meet my friend when we skipped school, the first place I caught a ride hitchhiking, the field where my heart was first broken, the place I used to perform in a ballet company, the last place I caught a ride hitchhiking, the creek where I swam with my friends before my heart had been broken, the blank, empty lot that’s left from the house where I conceived my daughter, and many of the people that were there to witness it all. This place is a fractal. You grow up here and raise your children here, you can be certain they will find themselves drinking on the same dead ends and finding lovers who remind you of your own. They might even go places you went, and then you are involved in the sort of time conundrum that can cripple a person.
Whoa! Nice beginning! This is the kind of beginning that would grab MY attention, and I think it just did! More, please.
Thank you so much, Leslie. I’ll see if I can figure out a few more pieces to post. But it really does need a lot of work.
I love it. I assume that this was not about you then since you called it fiction? I kinda thinka I know where my daughter was conceived but when you’re young, horny and having a lot of orgasmic sex, it can be hard to pinpoint…..
Well…ahem…yes. Fiction. I believe Wickipedia defines fiction as “the subterfuge an author uses in order to write about his life and not be held personally responsible for the fallout.”
Or at least it will define it that way when I go edit the entry.
P.S. I actually do know where my daughter was conceived, but it doesn’t mean it was a rollicking good time.
keep going at your own pace (ie, forget NANO) and you will eventually finish. And it will be a good journey.
The book I finish might not even be this one, but that’s okay. It will be quite a ride, I’m sure.
I am interested. Especially since the characters daughter was conceived in front of a bunch of witnesses.
Ah, very clever, Bear. You aren’t the first to catch that bit. Did I mention “unedited”?
I love it, BKT! You have such a way with words…
I’m with Leslie- I WANT MORE!
Awesome, I love it. I would read more, a lot more. Thanks for sharing BK.
You’re such an awesome writer. Can’t wait to see where it’s going!