I was minding my own business on November 2 when I realized that it was November 2. More specifically, I realized that it was already the second day of National Novel Writing Month, and I hadn’t even decided if I was going to accept the challenge for another year. As exhilarating as writing the first full draft of a novel was two years ago, I couldn’t even hope to participate last year in the middle of a career and continent change. While I’m more settled now, I hate starting things late. I’ve been known to completely skip events if I arrive even five minutes late. So, starting NaNoWriMo late (already behind) was bad, but waiting another year was unthinkable.
The first (technically third) day of writing was amazing. My fingers flew across the keyboard; I updated my Ideas notebook (which is a notebook from the amazing children’s storybook What Do You Do with an Idea); I ploughed through a chapter of revisions. And then the second day came. It’s amazing how much more exciting washing dishes or cleaning out my drains are when I should be writing. Even less productive things like coloring become riveting. Zinsser said that he liked to have written. How much I usually agree with him. But my struggle this month has not been with writing pains but with revision pains. I was at the brink of tossing my whole novel out the window, which would have satisfying dramatics since I live on the twentieth floor. The plot was shapeless and unwieldy. I wanted to cut entire story arcs. I felt like my second-grade self who decided one day to write a mystery story, so sure that I knew the right way to accomplish such an impossibly large task. I don’t remember when I gave up on that mystery story; I just have snatches of the beginning of that memory. Perhaps I tossed those yellow scraps of paper out the window. (More likely, they were thrown out by someone cleaning who did not realize the value eight-year-olds place on odd, tiny things.) Taking a page from my eight-year-old self’s notebook, I spent three days writing the main events of my novel onto yellow scraps of paper—sticky notes. Then I realized that yellow just wasn’t enough. I added green, blue, pink, yarn, highlighters. Now, as I work on my novel revision, I sit on the floor staring at my wall, a pastel and yarn outline. The physical act of rearranging the sticky-note-plot-points and connecting them with green yarn released my brain from trying to keep track of the different threads of the main plot and subplots and themes. Suddenly, I could see in the collage of sticky notes and yarn a unity in the formerly warring story arcs. By dissecting my novel, I unified it. Since college, I have been in awe of Charles Dickens’s ability to write beautifully complex novels serially. Small, insignificant details in the first volume of A Tale of Two Cities seem like a waste of words and an author’s indulgence in pretty prose, but in the end of the novel, each thread comes together with precision. Staring at my wall now, I wonder if the inside of Charles Dickens’s brain looked like my wall. Or perhaps, his walls were also a web of paper scraps and yarn.
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Not for the first time, I faced a situation which left me wishing that I knew what genre my story is. After all, knowing the genre allows the audience to predict plausible outcomes. I used to wish for soundtrack music. How invaluable would that be if we could hear our story’s soundtrack? As you head for the stair door, the ominous music begins, so you choose the elevator instead. The inspirational music swells behind you as you wax eloquent in class, and suddenly the whole class is standing on their desks—oh, wait, that teacher got fired. See, he should have listened to the music’s warning!
Even without the ability to hear our story’s soundtrack, just knowing the genre would be helpful. One autumn evening, my roommate and I were driving home later than usual. We saw a lane that led off into the woods that neither of us had noticed before. My roommate wanted to explore it, but I pointed out that it might not be safe. She argued that whatever was at the end of the lane could be cool, exciting, and fun. I pointed out that this conversation is the point in the movie when the audience is telling the girls not to turn down the abandoned path because their car will die, and a crazed escaped convict will end up chasing them through the woods. She countered that perhaps this is the beginning of a romcom, in which case, when the car dies, a handsome man who lives nearby will heroically lend us a hand. Another obvious option was that a portal to Narnia or Brigadoon were waiting for us. Needless to say, we did not take the path less travelled, and we both had “Go Home to Bonny Jean” stuck in our heads for hours after. (Sorry if you have it stuck in your head now, too.) Knowing the genre of the story changes everything. I had an epiphany this week while I was watching tv. It takes either ten minutes to form a deep committed relationship with a new acquaintance OR it takes ten years to finally commit to the deep relationship that everyone knows you and your colleague already have. At least, in Hollywood’s portrayal of life, the first rule is true if you are working in solving crime on a weekly basis, and the second rule is true if you are in a romantic comedy. For teen romance, they need even less time and fewer words: after one awkwardly long look across a crowded hall or room, they will irrationally commit to this instant relationship. These rules are why I have accidentally had boyfriends that I didn’t realize I was dating. The guys were following tv series rules: we were friends and colleagues, so naturally we were going to get married during the penultimate season. I, on the other hand, was following movie rules of love: we hadn’t kissed after ten minutes, so I knew we were not dating. The romcom rule of love does not, of course, apply to Hallmark movies. If my life is a Hallmark movie, then I will not find true love until my life is absolutely in shambles. Only when you are facing foreclosure, bankruptcy, or the terminal illness of a family member can you realize that the Kind Stranger or the Jerk-from-your-past-who-now-is-sorry is your true love. Back when I was in college, though, most of the girls just seemed to marry whomever they happened to be dating their senior year. This is clearly following action movie love rules: if you both survive to the end, then you’re a couple. I enjoy the bizarre. Lately, my life has been a little bizarre with some “sky is falling” craziness from people with decision-enforcing power. I comfort myself knowing that these experiences will one day be great stories. But as I muse over my current crazy, I am reminded of some of my past crazy that I haven’t written about yet.
One day back when I juggled multiple jobs and grad school, I woke up and headed to the coffee maker to start my leisurely morning. Sitting on the counter in front of the coffee maker sat a note: “The doorknob broke when I left this morning.” Since my roommate and I enjoyed opposite schedules, leaving notes by the coffee maker was our most reliable means of communication. Having read her cryptic message, I logically started brewing coffee, glanced at the closed door (which had a doorknob on it), and continued on my merry way. After breakfast and yoga, reason prompted me to check the door. After all, my roommate is logical. She would not leave me a note unless it merited action. I walked down the hall. The doorknob seemed fine. I turned the knob, and it came off in my hand. Startled, I stood there for a moment, contemplating the doorknob in my hand until the ramifications hit me. If I were holding the doorknob, how could I unlock the door? If I could not unlock the door, how would I open it? I called the apartment office to request maintenance. The automated recording instructed me to leave a message unless the maintenance problem were an emergency, in which case I should call a secondary number or call 911. That gave me something new to contemplate. Was this an emergency? After all, our lease outlined what maintenance emergencies were: water leaks and such. The lease also explained our options for being locked outside of our apartment, but, strangely, it mentioned nothing about being locked inside. Finally, I decided to call the maintenance emergency number and text my manager that I might be late to work due to a sudden need to impersonate Rapunzel. The Eastern European man who answered the emergency number had a very thick accent, and we did not successfully communicate. He kept assuring me that I should just open the door or put the knob back on the door. I kept assuring him that the knob was back on the door, but it was delicately balancing on the bolts, and no matter how many times I turned the lock, it wasn’t attached to anything inside the door anymore. I managed to convince him that he did, in fact, need to come rescue me. First, he went to the wrong apartment and called to ask why I wasn’t answering the door. Once he got to my door, he again asked me why I wasn’t answering the door. Calling through a sliver of light between the other half of the doorknob and the hole, I explained that I couldn’t open the door. Still crouched by the door, I watch his feet as he contemplated the door for a while before telling me that he needed my housekey. “Throw it out the window to me,” he said, and I saw his feet walk away. Rather than knocking a screen out of the window, I went out onto the balcony. After a few moments, an elderly man stepped into the backyard. He was the embodiment of a tourist’s stereotypical idea of a Santorini grandpa. “Throw down the key,” my Greek Prince Charming called. Like a good fairytale princess, I obeyed and dropped my key, hoping it would not get lost in the bushes three stories below. Armed with the key, he walked up the steps to my tower to rescue me. He let himself in and set to work on the doorknob. In a remarkably short time, he announced that he was done. The doorknob was fixed. Not convinced, I asked whether it were tightly on the door. To prove his point, he came inside and animatedly demonstrated the working doorknob, locking, unlocking, and opening the door. As he pulled the knob to open the door, once again, the knob came away in his hand and the door stayed closed. In stunned silence, he looked at me, then his hand with the doorknob, and finally the closed and locked door. He turned to me, surprise still slowly him. “My tools,” he managed to say. I looked down at the ground. There were no tools there; he had left his tools outside the now closed door. A hint of a smile grew around his eyes as he asked, “Do you have enough food for dinner?” |
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