🦋 Lauren* and Peter (morning)
I want to think about this story (or poem, or poem-story) I am trying to write, without actually working (right now) on writing it -- analyze what I have, what I'm looking for, how to get there, whether it is worth while. Suddenly realized this morning that this blog would be an agreeable venue for such a project -- a journal is the right place for thinking about the writing process. Maybe I'll come up with something useful, maybe not.
What I have right now, what seems like a well-crafted kernel for a SOPOPS† -- a lovely fun, sing-song meter that is reminding me a bit of "The Raven" and occasional rhyme; two characters Lauren and Peter in a stable, complex relationship, living together, maybe not connecting with each other quite as much as they'd like to, needing and not always finding each other's support; I have the setting as a smallish town, maybe upstate NY, maybe Maryland, and the house they live in, not far from the commercial district of the town. A garden, the the street they live on is not really described yet but I have a vague picture of it in mind -- small houses, the lots are not super-wide but not cramped either. When the story opens it is early morning on a Sunday late in Spring, still pretty dark out but getting light in the east, streetlights are still on. Peter can't sleep, he is walking down the street wishing something was open in town, a shop where he could buy a pack of cigarettes, longing for a little human contact -- and this longing is strange because after all his (wife? long-term girlfriend?) Lauren is back at home, realizing he's not in bed with her, (and the understanding here is that this has been a habit of his, insomnia, not being around early in the morning). Scene changes are kind of loosely spaced here, she's in the bathroom, she hears him downstairs, hopes he's making coffee, then they are both downstairs in the eat-in kitchen with a coffeepot, he's not meeting her eye. But so now what happens? I'm thinking there was some transaction between them in the last day or two that made the two of them uncomfortable, drove them a little apart, but I'm not sure what it was, quite, and anyway that is more scene-setting, what needs to happen is a plot of some kind that will unfold over the course of the day. Structurally it would be nice to have three chapters, named maybe Morning, Afternoon, Evening, with maybe a Yesterday in between the last two. Hoping the result of whatever happens in the story will be Lauren and Peter feeling a bit more of a connection in the last scene, where they are going to bed Sunday evening, here I could see putting a short bit of conversation, just a couple of lines, and a pleasant visual description of the shadow on the wall by their bedside, possibly even hinted-at hanky panky. So no earth-shattering revelation in other words, just a day in the life, a minor resolution of a minor clash. (Yeah, still nothing in focus, but at least the sense that there is an image there to come into focus.)
 * Is this the right name for her? I had "Laura" for a while but last night came to believe that it did not sound quite right. I guess she could also be named "Kathy"... Her husband (or long-term boyfriend) Peter is definitely named Peter. Not sure why but it seems to fit him like a glove.
† The newly-dubbed genre of Story (Or Poem, Or Story-Poem)
posted morning of Saturday, June 30th, 2012
➳ More posts about Poetry
➳ More posts about Writing Projects
➳ More posts about Projects
➳ More posts about SOPOSP
I always get stuck in the what happens next, how to make it flow and make a worthwhile reading experience and not just another project better kept in the thrash can. So.. good luck!
posted evening of June 30th, 2012 by Jorge López
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