NOTES
You think about the thing that follows the thing you describe.
You check all tenses. They change a little. This makes it a story.
Straight actions. You feel alcohol from the beer you drank take affect.
You develop are rule about using names and he/she.
You think the flow seems awkward in places.
There is no overall beauty, you say. Not just the sentences being good or bad. What about the whole story. Is it entertaining?
No. You feel like things just happen in a sequence. You have selected different points.
What happened to this person in their one and only life, you should think.
You did a bad job holding you breath at the aquarium.
You did a bad job solving the problem.
It seems like another repetitive you. You notice yourself repeating, but are not sure.
Does a book lie or lay?
Are you this character?
You think this character has aspects of your world embodied in their world.
This person does not refer to your world.
My world seems to be an orange on a slope.
You don’t know what the sentence before this means.
You say, “what.”
You seem dependent on the section breaks in the story. Breaks larger than paragraph breaks.
You think this is a weakness in the story.
Somehow work on connecting the parts that seem alienated, but dependent on the breaks, into the story.
You think about the theme here. How is everything connecting?
You are distracted while editing this story. Just finish this phase of revision then revise paragraph by paragraph.
You go to forums, download music. You are drinking alcohol.
There seems to be a point you want to reach. In six hours you are leaving for a wedding. You have not slept since yesterday morning.
You read that using second person frustrates a lot of professors.
You know this sort of just happened. Because your notes were boring before.
You want to include note taking in the story.
On the train you asked yourself why the main character reads novels. Or why are you writing about the main character reading novels. Is she experiencing things only people who read novels experience?
You’re just creating your own fictional world.
Stay isolated, alienated. ‘Behind your writing.’
You thought the scene where the characters braid each other’s hair seems boring. Maybe it should be deleted, or a conflict or something weird should be added. Something sexual.
You thought about your grandma reading this story while you were on the train.
The story seemed insignificant to you earlier.
Just another failed attempt. You took a note that indicated writing was more than just something you were interested in, like more than a television show you watched all the way through.
You like the part when the character enters the competitive darts tournament.
You cannot decide what should actually take place during the tournament. Is it at all entertaining? You think maybe the whole tournament scene should be one sentence.
It seems like you can think about this more later.
Maybe you can digest it into the overall theme, after you line edit a lot. Just get through a few revisions and chill.
You should relax. You’ve always known as much as you have known. I mean like you won’t learn more than what you already know.
Seems like people forget things here and there. It gets hyper, then slows down a lot.
Seems like whatever you do you have those important memories.
You got the name from a facebook friend who you saw was getting married.
You thought it was about time you finally wrote a story about a person that would stamp down your life a little. It would be like hitting a tree with a lacrosse stick, finally actually doing something.
You should edit even this, a lot.
You once thought about hopping up and hanging on a balcony to a pink building, somewhere in Florida. It was your grandparent’s condo.
There are other memories. You know where you have been.
You don’t let yourself like life the way you can.
You don’t know how much you like life.
You just want to party.
Partying seems like energy dispersed in random directions.
We seem to connect in all the dark places.
Write haikus together in a word document.
Add a part where the main character collaborates on haikus with either male or female friend.
You want all your friends to be really good at whatever they choose to do.
You feel like you can be really good at what you choose to do.
You begin to wonder if this story is something or nothing again.
It seems like you need to do something to the story.
Later maybe.
Or work on it until maybe 5 am.
Seems sweet. You did it bro.
You realize there is an appropriate time for something to take place. And the significance is the description of the result.
You know a friend’s face talking to you about this.
You’re dealing with a giant mess.
You just ‘cut’ this from the story:
Cindy makes progress in the novel while at her job. She reads three pages. She writes a note about the character. “Lonely”. She writes “When does this character actually do any work.” The novel flashes back into the character’s days as a teacher / writer. Cindy’s boss asks her to go to the cash registers to check out customers. Cindy thinks abstractly about the command her boss has on the employees. She wonders if the male workers receive the same tone from the female boss she does. I keep unwillingly realizing that I one day need to quit this job. I am lazy she thinks. My note taking validates my being lazy. I am taking careful note of it.
Cindy meets Margaret during her job. Jason takes Cindy and Margaret to meet a friend of Jason’s. Jason flirts with a singer at the place they go. Cindy leaves with a guy. Jason kisses singer good night. Cindy feels bad at her job. She feels negative things. Flaws, errors, self-doubt. Inconsistency, ignorance. Naiveté. Misunderstands chaotic, unknown origins of world. Feels self-conscious centered. Unlucky though untouched by tragedy or real sadness. Feels meaninglessness, aimlessness.
These lines are from your notebook:
Cindy do not confine Cindy. Woman. A larger thing than something. A sky or something. Women are amazing or something. You hate boys because you are one. You think you’re a bad inefficient one. What should. What your relationship to Cindy. Feel rejected by someone like her not because you’re not a complete, you are who you are type person, an authentic soul. Feel rejected by her purely for mistakes, carelessness, aimlessness etc. You feel rejected for being who you are not by someone not like Cindy. You want to fit Cindy into a story as a character who is trying to find a way to be an artist. Being an artist has something to do with hurt or something. You cannot change things. Things are the way they are. Can still work with Cindy. You realize you have not discovered anything or made any decisive actions as an artist or something. Even though you may have. You don’t feel validated in a larger sense of real life by them. Something about approach makes you feel insubstantial. You are totally incapable or even thinking sometimes. Totally honestly. Or something.
If you had a biographer she might write that you resiliently tried to work during this period but you were even distracted when you sat down to work because it was a popular and very accessible time for the internet. Maybe a period of crippling poverty or a war or something will happen to your life situation and you will go on to work and concentrate in a way that is notable and different from your peers.
Cindy is just comforted by art and not just watching or reading but writing and drawing maybe. Seems like that is a cool person to be. Confronted by sadness or happiness. You’re not sure what your preference is in friends. You think it is just kindness. The more you read and write though you discover that kindness sort of comes with taste. History is involved. You weren’t a heroin user early on so the drugged out crowd has moved on without you. They are in bands now. Ha!
You wrote this after that other thing:
The one piece you can understand @ once with pieces missing, unknowns. And about what you have decided to write about. because you like things and them seem to provide brain with energy. Thoughts. Not truth, understanding, acceptance, newness, just an instance of something happening out of other things being done or put into action. An experiment. On the scale of scientists just trying to figure things out without a lot of government funding or making things that will unnecessarily damage the environment or for the purposes of earning them money.
You don’t like this story.
You deleted the story accidentally. There was an error that involved the computer freezing and maybe cut and paste. And these notes. The original file of the notes survived though.
You are glad it happened like this, now anyway.
So you deleted the older versions of the story.
Actually you had an idea for a story that seemed easier to write.
The story you work on now seems to be funnier, the plot is there, you don’t have to stress over plot.
The story is also sad a lot in parts. Or pathetic for the one character.
