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Hopes, Fears, and Yellowing Leaves
Aug. 23rd, 2018 11:56 amIf I don’t write in my journal, then I don’t write at all that day.
That’s the way it goes for me: My journal is my warm-up. My musician’s scales. My crazy pencil sketches.
So, yesterday was practically the first time in a week that I looked at the Work in Progress.
I didn’t like what I saw. Probably my mood. I looked at the 200 or so pages, and I thought, Who fucking cares? Why are you doing this? Why, you could be watching all 156 episodes of the The West Wing back-to-back on Netflix! Or standing in line at Legoland!
I have watched enough of The West Wing on Netflix so that its characters, a significant proportion of the time, feel more real to me than the characters who populate my own life.
I suppose that’s because I know so much more about The West Wing's characters’ hopes and fears.
I hardly know anything about the hopes and fears of the people in my life. The subject never comes up. Unless I raise it. And then people look at me funny.
###
EVERYONE SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO ME-E-E-E-E-E!!!!!!!
That’s the prime directive.
My whimsies should dictate stock market trends! My beauty—accented, not diminished, by the impending tinge of winter frost—should launch 999 ships. My fascinating personality should be the subject of 1,000 tweets. The New York Times should write editorials about me. Every person I ever loved or slept with should be lining his (or her) pillow with regrets and contemplating suicide. Hell! Every person I ever even looked at twice in a supermarket should be looking for a wall to ram his (or her) head into.
I should not have to write a novel to get attention.
This should just be the way things are.
###
But since I am writing a novel…
The scene where June is strapped to a gurney and given electric shock treatments is very difficult to write. I suppose that’s because I have no frame of reference other than what I would feel if I were strapped down and given electric shock treatments. I’m channeling June’s rage, frustration, paranoia, desperation, fear. It’s not fun.
No wonder I’d rather rewrite the first chapter for the 35th time!
And look! I’ve added some marvelous new status details to Chapter One! I’ve described the stains on the worn pink satin divan in the living room of the flat on Montague Street! I’ve taken the reader on an enchanting voyage through the life cycle of the snails June finds in that tide pool on Long Island next to Scott Fitzgerald’s house!
How can this novel not be a bestseller?
How can it not win a Pulitzer Prize?
Why should I even need to finish it?
###
Nothing much else of any importance is going on here.
Various people have remarked over the past few days, “I can feel autumn in the air!”
I can’t feel autumn in the air. Though it has cooled down considerably. But I haven’t see so much as a single yellowing leaf.
That’s the way it goes for me: My journal is my warm-up. My musician’s scales. My crazy pencil sketches.
So, yesterday was practically the first time in a week that I looked at the Work in Progress.
I didn’t like what I saw. Probably my mood. I looked at the 200 or so pages, and I thought, Who fucking cares? Why are you doing this? Why, you could be watching all 156 episodes of the The West Wing back-to-back on Netflix! Or standing in line at Legoland!
I have watched enough of The West Wing on Netflix so that its characters, a significant proportion of the time, feel more real to me than the characters who populate my own life.
I suppose that’s because I know so much more about The West Wing's characters’ hopes and fears.
I hardly know anything about the hopes and fears of the people in my life. The subject never comes up. Unless I raise it. And then people look at me funny.
###
EVERYONE SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO ME-E-E-E-E-E!!!!!!!
That’s the prime directive.
My whimsies should dictate stock market trends! My beauty—accented, not diminished, by the impending tinge of winter frost—should launch 999 ships. My fascinating personality should be the subject of 1,000 tweets. The New York Times should write editorials about me. Every person I ever loved or slept with should be lining his (or her) pillow with regrets and contemplating suicide. Hell! Every person I ever even looked at twice in a supermarket should be looking for a wall to ram his (or her) head into.
I should not have to write a novel to get attention.
This should just be the way things are.
###
But since I am writing a novel…
The scene where June is strapped to a gurney and given electric shock treatments is very difficult to write. I suppose that’s because I have no frame of reference other than what I would feel if I were strapped down and given electric shock treatments. I’m channeling June’s rage, frustration, paranoia, desperation, fear. It’s not fun.
No wonder I’d rather rewrite the first chapter for the 35th time!
And look! I’ve added some marvelous new status details to Chapter One! I’ve described the stains on the worn pink satin divan in the living room of the flat on Montague Street! I’ve taken the reader on an enchanting voyage through the life cycle of the snails June finds in that tide pool on Long Island next to Scott Fitzgerald’s house!
How can this novel not be a bestseller?
How can it not win a Pulitzer Prize?
Why should I even need to finish it?
###
Nothing much else of any importance is going on here.
Various people have remarked over the past few days, “I can feel autumn in the air!”
I can’t feel autumn in the air. Though it has cooled down considerably. But I haven’t see so much as a single yellowing leaf.
