I had a good talk with Sina about getting published which calmed me down a bit. She made me forget for a moment how badly I want to get Windswept published as soon as humanly possible, that I don't want it sitting around in my brain forever, that I want to get it out and be done with it. I don't know why. Part of it is I'm afraid it won't be as original if I let it wait. It's set in 2008 and 2009, and it's... I don't know. I don't know if I'm at a vocalizing-this-coherently stage yet. I just want it out, I want it being read. But she made good points in favour of a slow-bubble-build.
I'm doing okay, passably, in school. I want to be doing better, though. I said three A-minuses at the least. That should be realistic enough, right? Right. Okay, let's do this.
I've started working on a new short story, titled "Runners," about a member of a high school track team. It's quite apart from Windswept or any of the Montrealers stories. I think it takes place in the States, in the Eighties or Nineties, though I'm not quite sure of everything yet.
It's very inspired by the bit in Hunger where Bobby Sands recounts a symbolic anecdote from his time on a track and field team to the Catholic priest. The pure aesthetic beauty of that scene—both the story he was telling, and what the viewer got to see—was too rich too ignore. My brain sprouted a little story, a little germinating bud, while it was lying in the loam, in the thrall.
The piece is about 1,200 words right now and I'm envisioning the final product as falling in the 10k range. It's narrated in the first person, which is very new for me, and I'm keeping the wordplay and references out, because he's a high school kid and he's a runner not a writer. It's all very fun, imposing constraints on myself. For some reason writing ends up being the only thing I'm not afraid to start working on the way I'm afraid to start essays or studying or getting a new Medicare card or stuff like that. Sometimes I avoid it, of course. I avoided starting the robbery scene in Windswept for two years. But by and large I am much more afraid of forgetting an idea before I've written it down than I am of starting something and being disappointed in it. I am capable of editing, of revising, of re-writing. I am capable of renovating.
I like renovating because everyone thinks "home improvement" when they hear renovating. But the word only means "making new again." It's a beautiful, beautiful word concealed in the muck of plumbers and carpenters. But it's all there if you look at it the right way; it's hidden in plain sight. I want to write a paragraph someday where I take off "renovating"'s dorky glasses and undo her tight pony-tail and then just like in the Breakfast Club the ugly girl is prom-queen beautiful and everyone is surprised, even though she was there the whole time. Metamorphosis. Whoo.
I'm off to bed. Let's hope I don't wake up too buggy. (Here is the shortest part that doesn't embarrass me:)
We practiced together every weeknight. We would get together and go running. Normal as anything. It's important when you are a runner to be able to separate your mind from your body, like a surgeon might cut out a piece of cancer from a patient. Thoughts do not win races. You do not have time to think to yourself about the guy pulling ahead of you in the next lane. That does not even enter into it.
