9/18/11

One of the fun things about writing these little essays is the simple reality that although I often know in the beginning exactly what I want to say by the time I get to the end of each piece, I almost never end up there once the thing is done. And this is not just the fault of the bourbon. No really, it’s not. I’ll see something, or read something, or hear something, and my little mind goes, “that’s interesting”, and then I chew on it for five minutes, or five days, or five whatevers, and then I’ll know what I want to say about it, and I set out to do just that. Like I’m doing here. And then that thing I call my random access mind starts grinding, and the fingers tap the keys, and like James Taylor once said, “nobody knows how we got to the top of the hill, but we might as well enjoy the ride.” And off we go…

I’m trying to write the great American novel. That’s not the same as saying I’ve finished it. I have put down three chapters, give or take, which is far from a novel. And yeah, I have some idea of where it is supposed to go, and how it might end, but I guess you might say I’m waiting for the mind to grab the thing and take me for a ride. This might take a while. Don’t hold your breath.

I have no idea how to write a novel. But I figure you start with some premise that just seems too cool to not craft into a story, and you get a good start, and some idea where ya want to finish, and then you turn the fingers loose. So I wrote three chapters that I kinda like. And then I stopped to wait for more.

In the mean time, I signed up for this magazine on my Kindle, a thing called “One Story” which is a magazine that for the last decade has been publishing one short story each month. And I thought, “These folks do a great job, and they win all these awards and stuff, and I’m gonna send them my best and see what happens, knowing full well that I am an intruder in their world and untrained and unequipped for such a gesture.

 So I took the first two chapters of my novel and broke them apart and lubed em up and then sewed them together again, and I’m gonna play with this for a bit and maybe send it in. And then wait to be rejected.

What I’ve learned already from this exercise is that what seems like a story with chapters is not necessarily how things turn out. Cause sometimes you can make something better out of tearing apart what you planned, and that’s ok.

Now, this time next week, we will be somewhere in Montana or North Dakota. We have the unmitigated pleasure of attending the wedding of one of our springoffs with a very fine lady on the second of October, and since they will be in Massachusetts for this celebration, we thought we’d best be there too. And we thought this would be a good excuse for a road trip. And for some reason, this felt, to my silly brain, kinda like writin’ a novel.

I figure each day of the road trip is another chapter. And I have the first two chapters pretty well figured out, onnacount of we have done this part so many times before. On Friday night we will be in Battle Mountain, and on Saturday we’ll be in West Yellowstone. And after this, it may get interesting. I’ve some idea what should happen next, but if I can simply let go of the notion that I know what needs to happen next, tear the plan apart and just let it happen, the results should be far better. We shall pick our way across a nation, the northern part this time, and the gods willing and the creeks don’t rise, we will see some fall color, some headwaters of the Mississippi River, some slice of Canada, and then some Vermont and Massachusetts in time for a wedding party. And then, one way or another, we’ll find our way back home. 

If anything neat happens, or if my mind takes the opportunity presented when not being enslaved at work and it comes up with something interesting, I’ll throw it out here and on the blog. Might be fun. And yeah, I’m real curious about how things might end up.