It Must Be Destiny

Readers, by now you know that I have some ambition to be a writer, though I have little idea of how to get there. Well, I began my new "career" on Tuesday in Starbucks with a notebook and a pen. I got an iced tea with a gift certificate that was a retirement present and sat down in an easy chair. I was no more than 6 lines and ten minutes in to a ditty about a Latino man on his porch in the summer heat with a bible listening to window air conditioners buzz all around him when the young woman in the easy chair next to me said, "excuse me."

"Yes?" I said.

"Are you a writer?"

I paused, trying to figure out how to answer appropriately. "Occasionally," I managed.

Milestone Update

A week into retirement, and no writing yet. My excuses are good enough that I don't feel guilty at all: traveling to rural Ohio for a wedding and then coming home to my parents' house for a few days where I have no computer of my very own and they have prehistoric internet access. I have been doing some reading, though. A couple of weeks ago I bought issue 11 of McSweeney's and I've been learning about a new way to write short fiction. Every single one of the stories is shocking. Most of them are shocking in some kind of sexual way. Most of them don't bother to introduce their characters, sometimes not even bothering to name them. And most importantly, none of them have any resolution. None. No happy ending, no sad ending, no ending at all. You could call them episodic, maybe they're snapshots, maybe that's how all short fiction is, maybe that's how good short fiction is, maybe that fits how life is -- no clean beginnings or endings. I'm not sure I like it in my reading (though I know that I like McSweeney's for it's leather-bound cover and thick Icelandic paper). It is however, something I could do in my writing. You need one idea, and you don't need to be able to tie it to anything or to take it, proverbially, home. Writing that way could be some sort of educated professional choice for the folks at McSweeney's; for me it could be a nice little cop out. Stay tuned.

Yowzee

I listened to The Strokes' first album again today. Man, is it good. Gadzooks.