FROM ED
...I was hoping to get some feedback to the opening of a novel I've been working on. Here is it--
***
If you can’t forget, you have to remember. That’s what you said to me. I said in reply, That seems obvious, and you said, It’s less obvious than you think.
I’ve been in a sorry state lately. It’s my sophomore year in college and I’m taking these very difficult Bio-Chem major requirements, like Biology 421 Intro to Bioinformatics and Chemistry 566 Mettalopharmaceuticals. They are boring to say the least and make me question whether I actually want to do the whole science thing for the rest of my life. But that’s not even the Rub. I’ve been questioning Everything, where and who I am, who I want to be and so forth. Scary stuff that’s made me a total grumpy-puss. You know in Moby Dick, when Melville writes that whenever Ishmael finds himself Growing grim about the mouth and wanting to knock people’s hats off, he must take to the sea? Well, that’s exactly how I feel. Like there’s a November in my soul. Except I don’t have any sea to take to.
So I went to your office and sat down on the hardwood chair in front of your desk. The room smelled like coffee beans. Yellow, mid-afternoon light filtered through the blinds, forming a striped pattern on the carpeted floor. I kept focusing on those bands of light as I ranted on about how I hated college and wanted to change and be Me but didn’t know how. A long tirade with lots of gesticulation. You listened, pressing your hands together as if in prayer until the river of words flowing from my mouth dried up. Then there was a long pause in which I began feel self-conscious, for talking so long, and the way you squinted out the window made me think that maybe you were judging me when you said at last,
I'm not sure there's much I can do for you kiddo.
Well thanks, I snorted.
No, I only mean that…the stuff you’re wrestling with…that’s just it. You’ve got to wrestle with it.
But I don’t want to wrestle.
Of course you don’t!, you laughed, who does? But there may be some use to it. Here. I’ve got something for you. You opened your desk drawer and pulled out this little journal, the one I’m writing in now, with its cardboard brown cover and soft vanilla pages. You need to write Your Story, whatever that might be, you said, handing it to me. I flipped through its blank pages. Chronicle your current journey. Add drawings, recipes, receipts, whatever. It’s all research for examining your soul and perhaps, a starting point for your first book.
Wait. Wait. Rewind. You really think I could write a book? Honest to God? (I say this expression a lot which is pretty ironic).
If you gave writing half the attention you give your science classes, no doubt about it Mary. You could write a book.
I felt a jazzed, jittery energy in my chest then like I’d had too much caffeine. It’s the kind of excitement that’s been missing in my life for a long time now. The way I used to feel when I was a kid studying science textbooks and the world began to unfold itself to me, and I could grasp the new dimension of everything, like suddenly seeing the second image in one of those illusion drawings that looks like one thing but is actually two. A book, my book. My First Book.
Well. thanks. I’m flattered, I said and put the journal in my bag.
Just write in it, ok? No matter what, anything you have to say here will be interesting. And you’ve got that dark past to deal with! A novel in the making if I ever saw one.
How true. And yet, when I got home, this journal joined the rest of the litter on my bedroom floor. Ended up wedged between my desk and my bed with a slew of old papers. Because even though your encouragement excited me, made me think maybe I could do something amazing like that, I was full of self-doubt. A lot of people had said that I was a Great writer in the making, but emphasis on the in the making. My English prof likes to scribble that my short stories are Promising but Sloppy (kind of like my life, huh?). Also I wasn’t completely sold on the idea of writing as therapy, or however you phrased it, Examining the Soul. I thought that the root of my unhappiness wasn’t in but out. Thought I only needed a change of scenery.
But that dark past? Nothing begs to be written down more than the pitiful, morose events of our adolescence. I’d forgotten that I guess. But then I read the letter and everything went topsy-turvy and I didn't want to fight to forget anymore. I remember it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving when my mom gave it to me, because I was packing my clothes to drive back to school when she knocked on the door.
Uh-uh. Come in.
***
--and it goes on from there. Please and thank yous.
CRITIQUE
Okay...not awful. It moves along. If you're going to show Mary's writing improve as she writes - maybe she learns things in class about how to write effectively and slowly starts incorporating them in her writing - if we see her writing evolve, that could be very interesting. Content and style are symbiotic. If you start caring about how you write, it influences what you choose to write about, and vice versa. Maybe she starts out writing in the journal, but as time goes on, she starts to edit more, to become more precise with words and punctuation, and she gets sick of erasing and decides to write on the computer so she can change things easier. She starts punctuating dialog. She stops writing a letter to her counselor and starts writing the story of her life. Maybe in writing some difficult memories, she switches from first person to third person and begins to inject more art and skill. I think it could be very interesting indeed. Have you ever read Flowers for Algernon?
But if you plan to write the entire novel at this level of quality, I think I'd have to hold my nose as I read...and it better be a darn good story to overcome the writing.
If you don't punctuate dialogue, at least put it in separate paragraphs. The first paragraph in your first post should be three paragraphs, and the first two sentences should be one, like this:
If you can’t forget, you have to remember - that’s what you said to me.
I said, That seems obvious.
You said, It’s less obvious than you think.