I spent a good part of the weekend tinkering with chapter 2. For whatever reason, I’ve always struggled with the second chapter. No, that doesn’t mean that I stopped there. I’ve tried a variety of strategies including going ahead and writing chapter 3, 7, 9. I’ve written an ending. I’ve redone my opening chapters.
Chapter two keeps feeling like the moment sculptors sometimes have with a block of granite. Once you get to a certain point a lot of your possibilities disappear. The opening chapter lays out a basic situation and piques interest. The second chapter always feels to me like it’s the moment when the story sets a direction.
In any case, I found myself literally writing about the origins and purposes of a cyclone fence for close to a day. How’s that for a metaphor?
In the meantime, all manner of bloggable topics float past me. There’s Barry Bonds’s auctioned baseball with the online poll, OJ (the guy who was the subject of my very first blog post), the progress of my daughter’s volleyball team, the strange state of the war and the attorney general appointment…..A few months ago, I would have been posting away about any of these items. These last few days, I’ve been telling myself “focus”, make sure you work on the “big thing”. Grrrrrr…..
In the midst of my writing day on Sunday, I got a reply for a story that I’d submitted to a journal on 9/4. They had it for all of 11 days. Their e-mail to me used my name, mentioned my story by name, said they really enjoyed it, but it wasn’t quite right for them. Essentially, they said to try them again. I then spent a couple hours puzzling over whether this was just a very diplomatic, but canned brush off, or if it was a genuine act of kindness on the part of some “editor” or “slushpile” slave. Who knows? I do know that it reminded me of why I really liked blogging in the first place. I could at least just get the story out there and not screw with whether or not some gatekeeper felt it was was worthy and what it meant if they didn’t.
So despite the fact that my life has turned insanely busy, I’m going to get chapter 2 of very very rough drat out. Just to warn you, I’ve done this before then felt like Chapter 2 just wasn’t good enough. Anyway, back to climbing that cyclone fence.
Oh geez, I forgot, I also spent an hour writing a fax to google legal to see if someone would help me reclaim my old blog address and/or help me recover the hundreds of posts there. In the meantime, I check my e-mail constantly thinking that someone might have replied to either my e-mails or the fax.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Chapter Two Blues
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3 comments:
I think the journal wants you to try again, they recognize your talent or else they'd just say 'no thanks' and leave it at that. Of course, I'm about to read your Chapter 1 and tear it to shreds but that's just me.
Love,
OJ
I know the "insanely busy" feeling. I realized back in the Pleistocene that there was never going to be the Winter in a Vermont cabin with the snow softly falling idyll. So, as you've done, I learned to just press on, regardless. Remember hearteningly that two of the finest had other jobs. Wallace Stevens was an insurance man and TS was a banker.
Another tidbit from my old college friend. There's a part of the CA code called 5150 which refers to a 72 hour involuntary psychiatric hold for people who are "a danger to others ... including hearing voices telling them to kill other people."
Gosh knows Sicker Dick hears voices telling him to shock & awe 2000 bombsites in Iran. There is 'humane treatment' required for such 5150 detainees, but waterboarding ain't torture & think of all those non-torturous sleep-depriving 'stress' positions Mr. Sicker might enjoy.
So my new sign after 4 years, 10 months, & 11 days of carrying my Teach Peace sign in our downtown is
................5150
...............Sicker
................Dick
Hey Chance, did you ever do any of that Artist's Way stuff, or any of the other pile of self-help approaches to creative blocks? Or maybe it would all just be another way to avoid Chapter 2. Speaking of avoidance tactics, stay away from ABC at 9:30 tonight.
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