Go, story

True love is like ghosts. You can feel it coming, and then when it finally goes, you are left there with a slightly trembling heart. But it never really goes. You remember the moment for as long as you live because you imbued it with the power to save you, but it never does. It leaves you just on the brink of salvation, exhausted, dispirited, unable to pull yourself over to the other side.

It rained, I remember, the night she came.

Thus begins a story that I have started writing years ago and haven't yet finalized now, even after over twenty drafts. But after a little more time, it appears to have finalized itself without any need for me. It has come to the point where the story has taken a life of its own and has shaken itself free of me. Now I can only stand by and watch the story shape itself into a world where I can see myself walking silently among the characters, the grass, the words, the fears, the memories -- a different me walking, a different me looking out of the page to look at myself reading that very same page.

Always, at this point, I know I can let go of the story and let it fly to the form of publication that it is destined to join.


And then I go back to the more mundane things that seem to occupy my life in between stories: clean up my apartment, call a few friends, sleep, get some work done for the presentation due on Tuesday, pay my bills, order a new checkbook, listen to the The Royal Tenenbaums for the millionth time. It feels a little empty, but only for a moment. Because there is always yet another draft to finish, another story to write, another plot to thicken, another idea to dwell on. And then when the whole strange, inexplicable, fascinating, magical cycle starts over again, it will feel like a ghost has touched me once more, just a moment before the rains come.

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