The Beginning of Something
The wind is wet. That sounds nice but doesn’t make much sense. Any sense. I wrote it because it sounded nice. In my head. Wrote it as I usually write something to start off a story, or rather, as I often do. I don’t know where it came from. The wind is wet. Wet wind. The windy wet. Any of those could have come and I suppose a wet wind and Wind is wet could make some sense. It doesn’t make for good reading though. They don’t and The wind is wet doesn’t. At least I don’t think it does. And make for good writing, I mean, since it hasn’t really led to a second and then a third, and so on, sentence. Maybe in rewriting it or just writing it over, rather, I could make it better. I’ve done that before several times and it sometimes worked.
The wind is wet. That sounds nice but doesn’t make much sense. Any sense, or very little. I wrote it because it sounded like a sentence that might be the, or rather, a suitable beginning of a story. I don’t like Suitable but I don’t want to lose my line of thought. Because I sat down to write a story. When I sit down to write a story and nothing’s in my head when I sit down, I usually write the first thing that comes to mind when I start typing. The first thing I think of. The wind is wet was the first thing I thought of. It sounded right. As though it might lead to other things — sentences, phrases, etcetera — that would connect one after the other to be the first draft of a story. It’s happened before. I’ve written opening sentences in a similar way. Meaning I wrote the first thing that came to mind when I started to type and which had no connection to anything around me, since not only wasn’t there a wind out when I started to type but it was and still is a dry sunny day, and they’ve often led to follow-up sentences or dialogue, which became paragraphs and then pages or just one long paragraph, and once one nine to ten pages, which became in the end first drafts of stories. This one I don’t think will. It doesn’t have what? I don’t quite know, or rather, I can’t quite put it into words, but something — a force, some action, some staying or holding power, something. I knew I couldn’t quite put it into words. Not Quite.
I couldn’t put it into words at all or just about. But what I meant to say was that it doesn’t have what my instincts tell me a story must have to be a good story. Good meaning, well, Good. Meaning what? Now I’ve lost the line or thread or whatever it is that also keeps a story from continuing. Not From but just Keeps it continuing. Maybe if I write that first line from the first paragraph again or just start to write that whole first paragraph or even this paragraph from the beginning I’ll eventually come to a good beginning and can start the story from there. Is that what I’m aiming for or am I aiming to just write a story with a whole bunch of beginnings and rewriting of beginnings and rewriting or pretended rewriting of paragraphs, etcetera? For this is the first story I’ve started in more than a month. Actually, the first thing I’ve written, except for a letter to my mother and about three dozen postcards, several to my mother, in more than a month. I’ve been away. Explored prehistoric caves. Not so much Explored as Visited these caves. Paid the full admission fee if the ticket sellers wouldn’t, when I showed them my faculty card, charge me a reduced fee or let me in free, and went in with groups of ten to twenty people and once with about forty French schoolchildren and their chaperons and teachers and was guided through various caves with prehistoric paintings and engravings on the walls and one cave with both those and another with the painter’s hand stenciled on several of the walls, in the Dordogne region of France. The Department of France. Or maybe the Dordogne region in the Perigord Department of France. I left my map of that region or department in the Paris hotel we stayed in our last day in France and there isn’t an atlas in this summer cottage we rent in Maine. Anyway, all that has little or nothing to do with what I’m writing now except to say I haven’t written a stitch of fiction in a month because I’ve been away and wanted to start writing today, the day after we got back from France, and this is what I’ve written so far. I should have started today’s writing with a letter or postcard to someone, but I usually do that first thing after I’ve been away from writing for a week or more and I thought I’d try something different this time to see what would come out. This is what did. Not much for sure. I’ll probably put it away uncompleted or just throw it away, and if I don’t throw it away now, pick it up in half a year or so and see its worthlessness and then throw it away. But first see if something can come out of it now. Start, as an exercise, from the beginning of the last paragraph and see what happens. Or just start, since you already started from the beginning of the last paragraph, which was the beginning of the first paragraph you started, and as an Experiment, not an Exercise, from any place of the three written pages you blindly put your finger on. You’ve never done that before. So do it. I’m going to. Not because I never did it but because it seems like a good idea. I’m going to do it right now.
To other things. That’s what my finger landed on. I closed my eyes, shuffled the three pages and spread them out on top of the dictionary on my right side and put my finger down on page one’s second to last line. It actually landed on To other, so maybe I should have been true or something to what I said I’d do and just put down To other. Nothing much has come of the experiment so far, so maybe that’s what I’ll do right now.
To other. To other what? Two other what? Not either of those Whats but just To other. But To other what? That wasn’t a good idea. Or maybe it was but I just happened to land on the wrong words or one of the grouping of words least conducive or adaptable or malleable or whatever to start something going on the page. Maybe no grouping of words from those three pages would have started something going just then, but how could I ever know? I couldn’t. So it’s ridiculous thinking about. All I can conclude is that something might have started some other time with that grouping or any grouping of words from those three pages or even a single word my finger might have landed on, but didn’t when I tried it before. So try it again. Not blindly putting your finger on one of the pages, though I could also do that, but with To other, as now might be that Other time.
To other. Tother. Tuther. Tether. The wind is wet. I like that best. Or rather, I like it better than the rest. Wind is wet. I am wet. I am not. Not wet. I’m. Writing The wind is wet. I’m sitting here writing The wind is wet and Wind is wet. Magna’s downstairs writing whatever she’s writing. She’s writing something. Her typewriter’s going. She’s angry at me, or rather, she still might be if she’s still thinking about the spat we had about half an hour ago and which was most if not all my fault. Seems difficult for something to be All my fault. Anyway, I lied. The wind is wet wasn’t the first thing I wrote since I came back from France — I wrote — where is it? — I wrote — I’m going to look for it now — I wrote — just before I started this piece — This time I’m going to make it work. I’ve ruined all my other relationships. I know what I did. I knew it while I was doing it I didn’t even put in a period. I just stopped writing it and threw it away. I didn’t throw it away though would have if I had a waste basket or large paper bag or something like that here to throw it in. I put it at the right end of this table thinking that later I’ll go downstairs and get a paper bag, as the one waste basket in this cottage we’ve rented the last three summers has been beside Magna’s desk, and put in all of today’s trash: eraser pencil shavings — first thing I did when I sat at this table was sharpen two eraser pencils — and discarded manuscript pages and the like. Used tissues and pieces of toilet paper, since I’ve the start of a head cold and know I’ll be blowing my nose. In fact I’m going to blow my nose now with a tissue, not because what I just wrote gave me the idea to but because I suddenly have to.