One in the Books

Last night was a very momentous night for me. A night that's been a very long time coming. A night I've been imagining for months, if not years. But it's hard to grasp the magnitude of the accomplishment I finally achieved without some background.

N.B. I may or may not have told this story before. In fact, I'm pretty sure I have. But I'm (a) too lazy to go looking back through the archives to find it, and (b) pretty sure that anyone who was reading this blog back in those days probably isn't reading it anymore. So everyone gets to hear the story, and damn it, you're gonna like it.

I remember when I was a junior at Princeton, walking down Prospect Avenue towards Charter one spring afternoon. I was walking alone, looking around, taking in the beauty of the budding New Jersey spring, when my mind wavered momentarily to my academic responsibilities. I was smack dab in the middle of a JP that I had been irresponsibly ignoring--and believe me, it didn't help that I'd met with my advisor exactly once all semester, and for a total of about seven minutes--and even though I had a vague idea about my thesis topic, I was having one of my famous moments of self-doubt.

Then, like a flash, my mind shifted ever so slightly, away from the academic and towards a part of me that had lay dormant for a while but wasn't quite ready to roll over and die. I took my situation and projected it onto a fictional character, the character of a guy like me who was freaking out about his senior thesis and trying to figure out a way to turn the most important academic project of his life into something more personally and professionally meaningful than it presently was.

I began scheming about some of the dreams I'd had, and I projected those on him. So I couldn't make my way to see Poland any time soon? Give him funding to go there! Never met most of my father's side of the family? Have him go meet his family there! It seemed like an pretty nifty idea, one that, for some strange reason, stuck out in my mind more so than any other creative ideas had in recent memory. I resolved to keep it at the forefront of my thinking, and to meditate further on it when I had more free time.

Before long, this relatively simple idea took on a life of its own. At the risk of playing spoiler to a story I haven't even written yet, I'll withhold the details; but suffice it to say I managed to develop one of the most elaborate plots I've ever conceived. And even more promising, I'd managed to populate it with characters that I felt for in deep, meaningful ways. They were tortured, conflicted, complex. They were exactly the kinds of characters I loved to read about--and when I realized that, at the time, I had no idea how these characters would react to the situations that I'd placed them in, I got really excited. I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this idea was alive, and that it needed to be realized.

It didn't take long for me to sketch out some of the finer details, working through certain points in my mind before committing myself to seeing them through. By senior year, I'd been thinking about it so much that I had a complete, vivid mental picture of the entire first chapter, right down from the actions to the images, from the larger environs to the tics each character expressed. I knew precisely how it would start, precisely how it would develop, and precisely how it would end. All that was left for me to do was to write it.

But that was two years ago.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I loved Princeton, and I still do, but senior year did not treat me well. And one of the things that my unfortunate senior year imbued me with was a powerful sense of guilt--manifest specifically as the feeling that, if I was working on something that wasn't academic, I was being irresponsible. (And yes, I know, I've written on that before too.) So for two years, my great chapter languished in the recesses of my subconscious. Every now and again it whispered to me, and I would try to sit down and give it a go, but the words didn't come with ease. (For the past two years, they haven't at all, no matter the arena.) I'd written barely a page by the time my final semester of grad school began.

But with the end of grad school, as I've written for my last two posts, has come a new sensation, a feeling of inevitability in all the things I'd left behind for two years. It started one night when, three glasses of wine deep, I picked up the laptop and started typing, bringing myself to four pages. Not much, but a start.

Then, after an exceptionally frustrating day, I shut the door of my room, sequestered myself inside, and opened the document again. Another five pages, bringing me to a total of nine. Still nowhere near the end of the chapter, but at least it was going.

Finally, last night, the floodgates broke open. Monday was another day of mounting frustrations, but Tuesday had shown promise. I got some news on a possible job lead--which may or may not pan out but is still better than the tactics I've been using thus far--and because it was finally sunny (for only the third day this month), it seemed ideal weather for a walk. And during this walk, like that walk three long years ago, I was taking everything in when the right synapses snapped to life and gave me a fresh insight into my story. Specifically, how the story would move beyondthat first chapter. I was elated and impatient--I knew that I couldn't get to the new material without finishing the old stuff, so I steeled my resolve and told myself I'd work that night.

So after dinner, I packed up my things, drove to Starbucks, settled in with a Frappuccino and my laptop, and got to work. And you know what happened?

Three hours later, Chapter One was complete. Done. For real and for true.

The satisfaction I felt is hard to put into words. It wasn't so much that I felt it was an amazing accomplishment, but the pressure of the perfectionism I'd placed over myself was finally released. It's hard for me to say whether or not I think the chapter is precisely how I'd imagined it would turn out, but it managed to hit all the points I'd planned, and I'm very much satisfied with the style and the impact of the whole thing.

But more important than all that: it's done. I don't need to sit and explain to people what I'm planning to do, how I expect it will come together. It has come together. Instead of dreaming about it, it's real and tangible, and I can show it to people instead of waxing philosophic about it. And the most satisfying part is knowing that because it's done, I know it can be done. This isn't just a fantasy anymore, in which I would ideally like to write the book. It's being written. And I have a sample chapter to prove it.

Nevertheless, I can't let my focus waver. I don't expect to have hyperproductive nights like last night all the time. But I do need to keep focused and continue working on my goal. In his splendid memoir On Writing, Stephen King notes that no matter what you're writing, "the work is always accomplished one word at a time" (156). One word at a time, one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, one chapter at a time. I can't rest too long on my laurels just because I've hit a benchmark--there are still many more to come.

So with this post, the celebration officially ends. I'm incredibly proud that I've finally reached a landmark on my journey, but contentment and complacency has been the bane of my existence for far too long. I can no longer be satisfied with simply Chapter One, because around the corner, Chapter Two still waits to be written.