I'm probably supposed to introduce myself and what I intend to do with this blog so you care enough to come back and see if I deliver on all of those promises. Every plot line I've ever seen starts with exposition—introduction of the characters, mention of a potential conflict—and while this blog is by no means a great literary work, that's what should be going on here. I should be posting a beginning.
But I don't want to construct a beginning. I don't know how to so easily define myself within a post. This blog will probably consist of whatever comes to my head (or whatever TV show I'm currently obsessed with). And I don't know how to seem exciting enough to make you want to return.
Instead, I want to talk about beginnings in general.
I should mention that I am a writer. I took a class at the beginning of this year where our goal was to work on a young adult novel. My teacher (an incredible YA author herself) was always concerned with the middle of our novels—the "icky middle," she not-so-lovingly called it. She'd compare the novel to a new relationship. You love it in the beginning, it's new and exciting, and then after a while, it gets difficult to write and you don't know where you are going or what your characters should be doing.
Maybe I'm strange or just not experienced enough, but my main problem didn't come with the middle. Don't get wrong, that was difficult too. But I could imagine conversations my characters would be having. Scenes would play out in my mind like a projector sending the images right out in front of me.
No, my problem was with the beginning. I could not figure out where this book should start. I tried introducing the best friends with a Friday night spent watching Pretty Woman and arguing about a bejeweled cardigan. But that went on and on (kind of like this post is about to do, I suppose).
Then I tried having the main character's mother tie her to a desk chair until she finished her college application. Yeah, that was never going to work.
• • •
Recent circumstances have made me wonder if it's not just the book. Maybe I don't like beginnings at all. I've moved around a ton during college, and after the initial excitement of a new place, I realize that I have to work up the courage to meet new people and adapt to a new routine. And dating? I echo the sentiments of Chandler Bing after Monica asks if he's freaked out that he'll never meet anyone new: "No. No, see, when I first meet somebody it's . . . it's mostly panic, anxiety, and a great deal of sweating."
Over the last few months, I've been forced into a new beginning, whether I like it or not. The first is that I graduated from college. I'd tell people I was graduating, and the most common response was "Lucky," in a Napoleon Dynamite sort of inflection. And I thought I was lucky. Even the most ardent of literature enthusiasts can get burnt out on reading Heart of Darkness multiple times. But that changes a few days you've thrown your cap and realized that you have no idea what to do with your life.
The other was the end of a long relationship.
No movie, book, or cliché in the world could have prepared me for that. How you put everything you have into something only to come up empty. And how you try to fill that emptiness with the vengeful froth that is "Part of Me" and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" and still hurt all over by the last refrain.
So here I am yet again, standing at the tip of a plot line, not knowing when the elements that lead me to a satisfying conclusion will fall into place.
• • •
Andy Griffith, who sadly passed away two months ago, plays a brilliant part in the film Waitress as a cranky old pie shop owner that looks after Jenna, the waitress who is pregnant with the baby of her rotten husband. He tells her, "Pie lady, listen to me. This life will kill you. I'm saying, make the right choice. Start fresh. It's never too late. Start fresh."
• • •
Right before my relationship ended, I got a call from my best friend. It was late, I was tired and heartbroken, and when I answered, I asked if she could call me back the next day. But she said there was something she had to tell me, and she put the phone on speaker so her husband could hear too.
"Shannon," she said, "what insect is the best?"
Immediately, I knew the answer to the trick question she'd borrowed from her sister. Not praying mantis. Not stick bug. The answer was an ant. An aunt.
And I broke down like the wimp I am because I was going to be an aunt to my best friend's first baby.
Now when I think about how lousy it can be to start over, leave things behind, and move on to other experiences, I think of my friends as new parents. The nights of sacrificed sleep. The spit-up on every shirt she owns. Probably panic, anxiety, and a great deal of sweating. All for a beautiful new beginning, the start of a family.
• • •
But I'll look back at this moment, helpless and hurtful, and know these opening lines got me to a happily ever after, a satisfying fin.
Because it's like that YA writing class, where I got up on the last day and read an opening to my book that I could honestly be proud of. Beginnings get you somewhere better.
0 comments:
Post a Comment