Be Brave Project, Day 55; Vague Phone Calls

I was about to write "There are few things that worry me as much as a vague phone call out of the blue. . .", but then I realized that's not true at all. Many things worry me a great deal. Like:

• flying


• vague aches and pains


• important looking envelopes in the mail


• emails from the more rage-fuelled members of my family.


• no emails from the more rage-fuelled members of my fam, which means they're plotting.


• ageing


• lack of financial stability


• what I've lost through the drunken years

But, few things kick up the worries about what the hell I am going to do--if anything is possible--about my cirrhotic mother quite like a phone call, out of the blue, from one of her dearest friends. Last night I got home (oh! you should see my home nowadays!) and came upstairs to read the New York Times front page story on Obama and McCain's debate the other night--when I noticed the light on my phone flashing.

No one calls my home phone, except my mother. And I just spoke with her.

So I check caller ID, and the call is from her life-long friend Anne. Anne and my mother went to school in Cleveland together, became debs together, went to Smith College together--and my mother set Anne up with her husband, the very wonderful Danny. When I saw the caller ID number, I immediately catastrophized and thought that my mother had finally died, been found with her head cracked open behind an arm chair, and somehow Anne had been elected to tell me.

But no--it was simply Anne wanting to ask me out to lunch, either here in the City or up in Bronxville where she lives. . .

However.

However. Anne has just seen my mother in the last few weeks, she has never asked me out to lunch before, and I am afraid that the drinking has got out of control (because it usually is), and that Anne has some really grim story to tell me (because there usually is one).

The whole thing bumps up anxieties in a big way, and make me want to not return the call. It makes me want to do some Christmas shopping and to see matinees and get massages and date gorgeously accented witty diverting men who sadly do not exist outside of my imagination. But, instead of spend money I don't have and date men who don't exist--which even I realize is not a particularly viable pair of options--I will call Anne at 10 am and set up a date for lunch.

What a fucking endless stress alcoholism is. The pain and the selfishness, the delusion and the weakness, the grotesque physical results and the contemptible emotional state all serve to bind people irrevocably to you with coils of steel, while making them dread the very thought of you.

And if you're the alcoholic child of a lush you get the old double whammy, because Boy, do you want a drink!

***

Yesterday I printed and created a file for the 'plot' information--I also went to good old Butler Library to read the file through, get some ideas on where to start, and look up books. . .for weeks, months, I've been trying to look up Writing Manuals that discuss plot. I type into the subject heading, "Plotting Novels", and receive information about Plotinus. Hmm. Yesterday I cracked the code, found that the phrase to use is "Fiction--technique". From there the computer led me to 9 pages of relevant books and to the potential Momma-Load of valuable information--a book on plotting suspense fiction written by Patricia Highsmith herself!! Oh, let the feet of the NYPL be fleet in getting it to me!!

Be Brave Project, Day 38: Get Down To IT, but How?

There really is one big thing I have to do with the Be Brave Project to complete my original list from nine weeks ago--work on that novel.

I have an incomplete manuscript that sit in my desk drawer. This manuscript won me a fellowship and a grant, and was my thesis project for graduate school. It is however, at this point, impossible to complete due to the fact that there is no coherent plot. It's all voice, 2 opposing voice driven first person narratives. So what I need to do before I get my ass out on the street and find a full time job so I can pay off those student loans and perhaps start eating meat again, is figure out A PLOT.

But I just don't know what to do about it--recently took a few books out of the library on plot, and they gave me some different styles of plot (For the Revenge story, for the Epic, for the Search story. . .). That gave me some ideas but isn't concrete enough. I want some very solid plot to sort of pin my story to, stretch out its fabric and show the light through the words, give all that narrative structure. In the way that satire is pinned to the skeleton of a previous text (Shamela to Richardson's Pamela, Swift's Modest Proposal to political and religious tracts of the time), I want to use an established form to make a comment.

I just don't know how to find a plot. That's the thing--I don't know how to find a plot right now and I cannot figure out where to start.

So I'll just have to take the BBP and shake it down a bit, cut the chunks into smaller bits and move forward from there. By next week at this time I want to:

-Have one P written that is a synopsis of a classic FILM plot I really like.

-Have a synopsis written that is a classic HARD BOILED MYSTERY (novel) that I like.

It's tough when moving to keep these other irons in the fire, plus family keeps coming to town as people do in Autumn. BTW the essay I wrote has now been turned down by the Times' "Modern Love" column, and by Marie Claire magazine. It's with Self now, and is destined to be sent to Psychology Today next. I really would like to sell this puppy--must think of English Publications to send it to.