As I read through the one novel that has been haunting me for some time for attention, I am never quite sure if more has been written or if it is in my head. I am 99.4 percent sure that there is more to this story actually written, so I have been going through my files with a fine tooth comb looking for that stray file. I can be very careless with my writing -- sitting down and writing for an entire day and then closing the file, giving it some random name, and then forgetting about it. So I opened up a file called Writing Between the Cracks. And it cracked me up.
Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000201 EndHTML:0000012020 StartFragment:0000002430 EndFragment:0000011984 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/lisamadden/Documents/Writing/writing%20between%20the%20cracks
Writing Between The Cracks
She has long, flowing blonde hair and it is snapping in the wind. He is reaching out to tame it, to tuck it behind her ears and get closer to her. He wants to lean in and kiss her, his lips are already beginning to pucker …
“Mom!” My daughter is standing before me.
I am startled and I look down to see that the water is boiling on the stove and there are vegetables waiting to be cut.
“What?” I ask her as I grab a carrot and chop its tail off.
“I have been yelling at you forever,” she says dramatically.
I am sure she can’t find her raincoat or her iPod or whatever item she has misplaced and now that I think of it, I no longer want Lucy to have blonde hair. All of my heroines have blonde hair, it’s time for a radical change. No, not red, I think. Brown hair.
“Mom!”
“What?”
“Do you ever listen?”
I take a deep breath and smile at her. “What do you have to say?”
“Nothing!” She shakes her head in disgust and leaves the room.
I begin to peel a potato and my thoughts return to Lucy. Now with the long, flowing brown hair. Oh, I smile as I recall that Ethan was just about to kiss her, and I can see him, his crazy, corkscrew curls blowing in the wind. They are on the ferry to the island where they are going to make love for the first time. And they are nervous, excited and I feel a little chill run up my spine, and then I scream in pain as I knick my thumb with the peeler. I grab a paper towel to stanch the flow of blood and then examine the half peeled potato. What am I making anyway?
I glance at the boiling water and the box on the counter. Spaghetti. Ahhhh, so what is up with the potato? The carrot is for a salad, but why am I peeling potatoes?
My daughter returns and glances at my finger. “You’re bleeding,” she says, then her eyes open wide. “What did you do to my potato?”
Her potato? I look at it guiltily, then hold up my thumb. “Look, I cut myself.”
“Mom,” she screams and turns the potato in her hands, glaring at me in horror. “You’ve ruined it.”
I shrug helplessly
“I can’t believe it,” she shrieks again. “This was Mr. Potato Head! You know, from the play I wrote. You said it was good!” She purses her lips and narrows her eyes. “You killed Mr. Potato Head.”
I don’t really know what to say.
“I can’t believe you killed Mr. Potato Head,” she mutters, and my husband walks into the kitchen.
“I hate you!” My daughter yells as she runs from the room.
My husband asks me what is for dinner.
This strikes me as rude and inconsiderate and I turn off the stove burner and head for the stairs. “Nothing,” I tell him.
In my bedroom I flop myself on the bed and stare up at the ceiling. Lucy would be scared, even though she and Ethan have known each other their whole lives. Her heart would pound and she would wonder what it was going to feel like. But Ethan would be afraid too…
“So we’re not having dinner?” My husband stares down at me. “What was the water boiling for?”
“I was making spaghetti but then I didn’t feel like spaghetti.”
“Pizza?”
“Sure,” I sigh with relief as he leaves the room. For the next half hour or so I can work out the love scene between Lucy and Ethan. I close my eyes and picture them in the tower bedroom …
“So, you’re not going to believe what Sarah just told me,” my older daughter lies down beside me on her stomach, her face inches from mine.
I open my eyes. “What?”
“Joel Smith is gay.”
“No way!” I sit up and look at her. “Are you sure?”
“He actually asked me out once. What was up with that?”
I can feel Lucy and Ethan fading into the ether for the time being as I realize I have to meet this conversation head on. “Well,” I begin, “I am sure he wasn’t sure himself.”
My daughter nods and then looks at me funny. “Why did you kill Maddie’s potato?”
*****
Now here is the thing. I have no idea why I wrote that or even if it is true. It has elements of truth in it -- certainly much of my life has been about the war between the characters in my head and the real people in my life vying for my time. And I use Maddie's name, but did Hallie ever know anyone named Joel Smith and was he gay? Did the potato head thing happen? I sort of kind of feel like it might have, and I have found myself many times making dinner because I felt obligated to only to realize I am far too distracted to go through with it!
It is the bane of being a writer sometimes -- the real often merges with the imagined -- and you are left with a sort of fusion of ...well I am not sure what you would call it! Did I start this thinking it would make a story? I have no idea. It just makes me laugh -- I have hundreds and hundreds of these little snippets, but yesterday I was at my parents with Maddie and I was on my father's computer, simultaneously chatting with Hallie in Dubai while trying to look up photos she had taken of her apartment there and carrying on a conversation with my father. Which of course is darn near impossible, and Maddie said to him, oh, she does that all the time, she opens her mouth and starts to say something, and then stops. Don't wait around, she'll never remember what she was saying.
If you re-read that paragraph it really makes no sense. I need to focus! What am I trying to say? Well, exactly! I try to fit too much in -- try to be too many things. I am right now in the midst of trying to finish this book, and what am I doing?
I am sharing my insanity, because there's more than enough to go around!
You are welcome!
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