Anatomy of a Novel

I think there's a novel in me somewhere. I'm not sure how it got there exactly. I mean, both of my parents are science-y, math-y people. Even my sister mostly dislikes English, although she is a far more dedicated journaler than I.

Maybe the novel nestled up against my rib cage, crushing my left lung a tad, is just buildup. You know, a bunch of leftovers mashed together into a convenient manuscript shape. A bit of This Side of Paradise here, some Harry Potter over there...and I think I can also feel pieces from some of the books I was forced to read: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Ellison are represented in that part.

Unfortunately, however, this inner Nobel winner of mine is not easily accessible. Sometimes when I'm in the shower or driving or sleeping or staring dumbly out of a window I get flashes of it, but they're never much. A conversation, maybe, or a glimpse of some character's face. They never seem to fit together, these flashes of mine. Most of the time I don't even write them down. I just continue to carry them with me, hoping for more.

Someday, I hope, my slowly emerging novel will be solid and promising on the table in front of me. I will be able to open the cover and smile at the dedication (because arrogant and sappy as I am, I already know who's name will be there). One day I will be at a Barnes and Noble, trying my best not to dash over to the fiction section and browse, and I will be signing copies of my book, handing them shyly back to people I have never met in my life. I will live in New York City (although I'll secretly miss Minnesota terribly), and I will dance (badly, because that's the only way I know how to dance) on Youtube with Libba Bray and John Green and Scott Westerfeld. And someday, when I'm old, and have written many many books, all of them precious to me, I will look a young, ambitious reporter full in the face, and answer a question. "My first novel was my most precious. Because I carried it around next to my heart*** for twenty years."

For now, though, I'll continue to blog. I'll continue to labor into the wee hours over papers whose topics I don't especially care about. I'll devour other people's stories in hopes that they will stick and become part of my own.

Someday, though (and it'll probably take a nasty case of hiccups), I will pour this entire novel onto paper (because it's so very uneloquent to say 'word document'). And I'll dance on Youtube with Libba Bray to celebrate.

Believe it.


***Don't worry, I Googled it: the heart is actually between the lungs. And the left lung, actually, is on the left side of your body if you look down at yourself. There! I did get a partial science gene after all!

Compass Optional

It is hot out. Hot as blazes, hot as Hades, hot as anything. Just plain broasting.
I'm currently sitting on my bed in my room in my dorm, moving my head every so often to catch every single bit of air my friend the fan is blowing my way.
Freshman Orientation starts tomorrow, and although Saturday is OGL free day, I still have a lot of work to do. I need to finish painting my signs, map out a tour route for myself (complete with talking prompts in case I forget things), plan/learn the games I'm going to play, hang up the posters in my room (in order to make room for my roommate to move in), and practice for the three Extravaganza skits I'm in.
On top of all that, people are slowly trickling into Spooner, lugging boxes and (sometimes) clinging to parents. I don't work very quickly when I'm constantly jumping up to say high to someone.
It's okay, though. Come Wednesday, I'll have done all I can to 'orient' my group of freshman, and I'll be heading off to class.

Speaking of class, I don't think I've told you which ones I'm taking this semester. Here they are:
Beginning German I
Understanding Writing
Survey of American Literature
Honors (small group discussion/large group lecture)
Icelandic Sagas (Honors)

Things I Want To Do

I will learn how to crochet.
Then, when I'm seventy years old or so, I will crochet afghans. I'll use whichever pattern and color I feel like using. But I won't make them for specific people. Only after each one is complete will I find a person to give it to. Anyone. The mail man, the teenager who bags my groceries, an old friend, my hairdresser. Anyone who I think needs an afghan at that time. Once I've given one away, I'll begin a new one.
Soon I'll know dozens of people, and a part of me will be a part of them, because they'll sleep and read and talk under the afghan I made.
Their lives will become mine.
Because when I'm seventy, I may still want to be a mail man, and a teenager who bags groceries, and an old friend, and a hairdresser.
But it will probably be enough to be an old lady who crochets.